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" The clarification of equilibrium through plastic art is of great importance for humanity. It reveals that although human life in time is doomed to disequilibrium, notwithstanding this, it is based on equilibrium. It demonstrates that equilibrium can become more and more living in us. "

Piet Mondrian

Great

Time

Life

Related Quotes:

" The desire for freedom and equilibrium (harmony) is inherent in man (due to the universal in him). "

" The rhythm of relations of color and size makes the absolute appear in the relativity of time and space. "

" Let us note that art - even on an abstract level - has never been confined to 'idea'; art has always been the 'realized' expression of equilibrium. "

" I want to abolish time, especially in the contemplation of architecture. "

" All individual thought is dissolved in universal thought, as all form is dissolved in the universal plastic means of Abstract-Real painting. "

" Many appreciate in my former work just what I did not want to express, but which was produced by an incapacity to express what I wanted to express - dynamic movement in equilibrium. But a continuous struggle for this statement brought me nearer. This is what I am attempting in 'Victory Boogie Woogie.' "

Piet Mondrian

Struggle

I Am

" The natural does not have to be a specific representation. I am now working on a thing which is a reconstruction of a starry sky, yet I make it, nevertheless, without a given in nature. "

" Only conscious man can mirror the universal: he can consciously become one with the universal and so can consciously transcend the individual. "

" I came to the destruction of volume by the use of the plane. This I accomplished by means of lines cutting the planes. But still, the plane remained too intact. So I came to making only lines and brought the colour within the lines. Now the only problem was to destroy these lines also through mutual oppositions. "

" Whoever says he is starting from a given in nature may be right, and so is he who says he is starting from nothing! "

" The meaning of words has become so blurred by past usage that 'abstract' is identified with 'vague' and 'unreal,' and 'inwardness' with a sort of traditional beatitude... The conception of the word 'plastic' has also been limited by individual interpretations. "

" We need words to name and designate things. But we have only a static language with which to express ourselves. "

" Things are beautiful or ugly only in time and space. The new man's vision being liberated from these two factors, all is unified in one unique beauty. "

" It has become progressively clearer that the plastic expression of true reality is attained through dynamic movement in equilibrium. Plastic art affirms that equilibrium can only be established through the balance of unequal but equivalent oppositions. "

" If the paying public demands naturalistic art, then an artist can use his skills to produce such pictures - but these are to be clearly distinguished from the artist's own art. "

" Everything is expressed through relationship. Colour can exist only through other colours, dimension through other dimensions, position through other positions that oppose them. That is why I regard relationship as the principal thing. "

" It is not important to make many pictures but that I have one picture right. "

" Experience was my only teacher; I knew little of the modern art movement. When I first saw the works of the Impressionists, van Gogh, van Dongen, and Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone. "

" One can rightly speak of an evolution in plastic art. It is of the greatest importance to note this fact, for it reveals the true way of art - the only path along which we can advance. "

" Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating 'expression' of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious. "

" True Boogie-Woogie I conceive as homogeneous in intention with mine in painting: destruction of melody, which is the equivalent of destruction of natural appearance, and construction through the continuous opposition of pure means - dynamic rhythm. "

" The spiritual (i.e. the supersensory) has many degrees; thus, the term 'spiritual' is used both for the scale of degrees away from the physical towards the spirit, but also only for the spiritual proper. "

" By turning from the surface, one comes closer to the inner laws of matter, which are also the laws of the Spirit. "

" The most advanced minds as well as the least advanced are obliged to use the same words. If we adopt new words, it will be even more difficult - if not impossible - to make ourselves understood. The new man must therefore express himself in conventional language. "

" Non-figurative art is created by establishing a dynamic rhythm of determinate mutual relations which excludes the formation of any particular form. "

" Through the very culture of representation through form, we have come to see that the abstract - like the mathematical - is actually expressed in and through all things, although not determinately. "

Piet Mondrian

Abstract

Culture

" The subjectivization of the universal in art brings the universal downward on one hand, while on the other it helps raise the individual toward the universal. "

" I think that the destructive element is too much neglected in art. "

" I am only satisfied insofar as I feel 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' is a definite progress, but even about this picture I am not quite satisfied. There is still too much of the old in it. "

" The artist sees the tragic to such a degree that he is compelled to express the non-tragic. "

Piet Mondrian

Degree

Artist