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I am not an abstractionist. ... I am not interested in the relationships of color or form or anything else. ... I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions — tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on — and the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures show that I communicate those basic human emotions. ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationships, then you miss the point!
--
Conversations with Artists by Selden Rodman, New York Devin-Adair 1957. p. 93.; reprinted as "Notes from a conversation with Selden Rodman, 1956" in Writings on Art : Mark Rothko (2006) edited by Miguel López-Remiro p. 119 books.google

 

Mark Rothko

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Political institutions and ideologies are the warty outgrowth of the religious thinking of the man; in a way responsible for the tragedy of mankind. We are slaves to our ideas and beliefs, and we torture ourselves in the hope of achieving something. All our experience, spiritual or otherwise, is the basic cause of our suffering... The body is not interested in anything "you" are interested in; that is the battle that is going on all the time.

 

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Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.

 

Rabindranath Tagore