We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a colour, a surface. (1925)
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"Abstract Art", Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 107Theo van Doesburg
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We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real then a line, a colour, a surface. A woman, a tree, a cow; are these concrete elements in a painting? No. A woman, a tree and a cow are concrete only in nature; in painting they are abstract, illusionistic, vague and speculative. However, a plane is a plane, a line is a line and no more or no less than that. "Concrete painting". Spirit has arrived at the age of maturity…
Theo van Doesburg
“He is such a gentleman; — and, at the same time, the most abstract and the most concrete man that I know.”
“Abstract and concrete!”
“You are bound to use adjectives of that sort now, Miss Palliser, if you mean to be anybody in conversation.”Anthony Trollope
The recognition of the light of reality within the darkness of abstraction is a contradiction – both the affirmation and the negation of the real at one and the same time. The new philosophy, which thinks the concrete not in an abstract but a concrete way, which acknowledges the real in its reality – that is, in a way corresponding to the being of the real as true, which elevates it into the principle and object of philosophy – is consequently the truth of the Hegelian philosophy, indeed of modern philosophy as a whole.
Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach
Painting is an essentially concrete art and can only consist of the representation of real and existing things. It is a completely physical language, the words of which consist of all visible objects. An object which is abstract, not visible, non-existent, is not within the realm of painting.
Gustave Courbet
The new plastic idea cannot, therefore, take the form of concrete representation, although the latter does always indicate the universal to a degree, or at least conceal it within. This new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and colour. On the contrary it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and colour, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary colour.
Piet Mondrian
Doesburg, Theo van
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