(The concept of abstract painting) is not a passing abstraction, good only for a few initiates’, (but) ‘the total expression of a new generation whose necessities it experiences and to all of whose aspirations it constitutes a response. (1920)
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Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co., 1964, p. 16Fernand Leger
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The role of the artist, of course, has always been that of image-maker. Different times require different images. Today when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt to escape from evil, and times are out of joint, our obsessive, subterranean and pictographic images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality. To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time.
Adolph Gottlieb
The intellectual abstraction of the second (analytical, fh) period of Cubism was of great importance, however. By its aspirations to the eternal and its "concept of proportion inspired by the Classics" it revived the sense of craftsmanship concept in many painters. And this perfectly coincided with another of my ambitions – which was to make, with paint, an object having the same perfection of craftsmanship that a cabinet-maker would put into a piece of furniture.
Gino Severini
This man has spoken; he has written, set forth orientation and decrees. The sum total of his actions constitutes Mobutism, just as the sum total of Mao's teachings constitutes Maoism...The President and Founder of the MPR repeats incessantly that a people aiming for greatness should neither repudiate other nations nor copy them.
Mobutu Sese Seko
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
Painting has nothing to do with thinking, because in painting thinking is painting. Thinking is language – record-keeping – and has to take place before and after. Einstein did not think when he was calculating: he calculated – producing the next equation in reaction to the one that went before – just as in painting one form is a response to another and so on."
Gerhard Richter
Leger, Fernand
Leggett, Anthony James
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