Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" 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. "

Related Quotes:

" 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. "

Piet Mondrian

Skills

Then

Pictures

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

" 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. "

" 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. "

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

Piet Mondrian

Only

Confusion

" 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. "

" I began as a naturalistic painter. Very quickly I felt the urgent need for a more concise form of expression and an economy of means. I never stopped progressing toward abstraction. "

Piet Mondrian

Need

Economy

" 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

" Art is the path to being spiritual. "

" 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. "

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

Piet Mondrian

Channel

Humble

" 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 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. "

" The positive and negative states of being bring about action. They cause the loss of balance and of happiness. They cause the eternal revolutions - the changes that follow one upon the other. They explain why happiness cannot be achieved in time. "

" 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. "

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

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

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

" 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. "

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

Piet Mondrian

Degree

Artist

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

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

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

" As tradition, the female element clings to the old art and opposes anything new - precisely because each new art moves further away from the natural appearance of things. "

" 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. "

" 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 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. "