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" 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. "

Piet Mondrian

I Am

Working

Sky

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

" I do not know how I shall develop, but for the present, I am continuing to work within ordinary, generally known terrain, different only because of a deep substratum, which leads those who are receptive to sense the finer regions. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Intuition enlightens and so links up with pure thought. They together become an intelligence which is not simply of the brain, which does not calculate, but feels and thinks. "

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

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

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

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Art is the path to being spiritual. "

" To move the picture into our surroundings and give it real existence has been my ideal since I came to abstract painting. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Subjectivity ceases to exist only when the mutation-like leap is made from subjectivity to objectivity, from individual existence to universal existence. "

" Reality only appears to us tragical because of the disequilibrium and confusion of its appearances. "

Piet Mondrian

Only

Confusion

" 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. "

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

" If the universal is the essential, then it is the basis of all life and art. Recognizing and uniting with the universal therefore gives us the greatest aesthetic satisfaction, the greatest emotion of beauty. "

" We must look not to the negative (the misery, the bestial in life), although we undergo it and sympathize with it, but rather to the burgeoning life around us, which is strengthened by the negative. "

Piet Mondrian

Look

Misery

" 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. "

" Just as pure abstract art is not dogmatic, neither is it decorative. "

" The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel. "

Piet Mondrian

Channel

Humble

" 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. "

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

Piet Mondrian

Degree

Artist