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Purer and emptier...non-objective, non-representational, non-figurative, non-imagist, non-expressionist, non-subjective .** On abstract art

 

Ad Reinhardt

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If you push it, it feels good; I don’t know what it is. It must have something to do with kinesthesia. I feel now that I am painting I’m not drawing anything, or even representing non-objective art. You know, you can represent abstract art, too, as well as heads figures, nudes. A lot of abstract artists are just representational painters, you know that. And a lot of figurative artists are very abstract. I don’t feel as if I’m doing that. I feel more as if I’m shaping something with my hands. I feel as if I’ve always wanted to get to that state. Like a blind man in a dark room had some clay, what would he make? I end up with 2 or 3 forms on a canvas, but it gets very physical for me. I always thought I am a very spiritual man, not interested in paint, and now I discover myself to be very physical and very involved with matter. I want to be involved with how heavy things are, a balloon, how light things are, things levitating, pushing forms, make me feel as if my hand is pushing in a head, bulges out here and pushes there.

 

Phillip Guston

 

The problem is one of opposition between subjective and objective points of view. There is a tendency to seek an objective account of everything before admitting its reality. But often what appears to a more subjective point of view cannot be accounted for in this way. So either the objective conception of the world is incomplete, or the subjective involves illusions that should be rejected.

 

Thomas Nagel

 

I don’t care for 'abstract expressionism'... and it is certainly not ‘non-objective’, and not ‘non-representational’ either. I’m very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you’re painting out of your consciousness, figures are bound to emerge. We’re all of us influenced by Freud, I guess. I’ve been a Jungian for a long time... Painting is a state of being... Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

 

Jackson Pollock

 

The kind of painting which I find exciting is not necessarily representational or non-representational, but it is musical and architectural... Whether this visual relationship is slightly more or slightly less abstract is, for me, beside the point.

 

Ben Nicholson

 

I have never been entirely satisfied with the materialistic or behavioristic thesis that a complete explanation of brain function is possible in purely objective terms with no reference whatever to subjective experience; i.e., that in scientific analysis we can confidently and advantageously disregard the subjective properties of the brain process. I do not mean we should abandon the objective approach or repeat the errors of the earlier introspective era. It is just that I find it difficult to believe that the sensations and other subjective experiences per se serve no function, have no operational value and no place in our working models of the brain.

 

Roger Wolcott Sperry