Abstract Quotes

• Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.

  Jackson Pollock

  Abstract Painting, Compliment, Expressionism

  Quoted in FrancisVO'Connor Jackson Pollock (1967).

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• There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

  Pablo Picasso

  Inspirational, Art, Reality

  Pablo Picasso (1964*). “Picasso and Man”

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• The soaring, imaginative minds of men, constructing lofty, shimmering piles of abstract thought, and taking as their postulate a revelation from God, gaveus relgions which coule not possible maintained without belief and obedience: ... we find them most permanent and changeless among people who make the least effort to swquare their beliefs with the laws of life.

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  Men, Law, People

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• The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

  Lucian Freud

  Motivational, Art, Real

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• I'm not a natural leader. I'm too intellectual; I'm too abstract; I think too much.

  Newt Gingrich

  Leadership, Thinking, Intellectual

  "The Politics of Perception" by Connie Bruck, www.newyorker.com. October 9, 1995.

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• The abstract way we think is really grounded in the concrete, bodily world much more than we thought.

  John Bargh

  Thinking, World, Way

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• Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.

  Saul Alinsky

  Change, Mean, Vacuums

  Saul Alinsky (2010). “Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals”, p.21, Vintage

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• Language is not an abstract construction of the learned, or of dictionary makers, but is something arising out of the work, needs, ties, joys, affections, tastes, of long generations of humanity, and has its bases broad and low, close to the ground

  Noah Webster

  Ties, Long, Joy

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• Even abstract shapes must have a likeness

  Willem de Kooning

  Shapes

  Willem De Kooning, John Elderfield, Lauren Mahony (2011). “De Kooning: A Retrospective”, p.13, The Museum of Modern Art

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• I understand abstract art as an attempt to feed imagination with a world built through the basic sensations of the eyes.

  Jean Helion

  Art, Eye, Imagination

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• ...That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.

  Constantin Brancusi

  Art, Real, Essence

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• I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract.

  Gustave Moreau

  Passion, Burning, Irresistible

  "Gustave Moreau". Book by Jean Paladilhe, p. 32, June 5, 1972.

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• Money is human happiness in the abstract; he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes himself utterly to money.

  Arthur Schopenhauer

  Happiness, Sad, Money

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• The more horrifying this world becomes, the more art becomes abstract.

  Ellen Key

  Art, World, This World

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• Our ideas must agree with realities, be such realities concrete or abstract, be they facts or be they principles, under penalty of endless inconsistency and frustration.

  William James

  Reality, Frustration, Ideas

  William James (2007). “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking”, p.128, Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

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• Abstract pictures are fictive models, because they make visible a reality that we can neither see nor describe, but whose existence we can postulate.

  Gerhard Richter

  Reality, Existence, Models

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Jun 07, 2013

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• The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.

  Albert Einstein

  Inspirational, Positive, Knowledge

  "János : The Story of a Doctor" by János Plesch, translated by Edward FitzGerald, 1947.

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• What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

  Walter Pater

  Beauty, Beautiful, Important

  Walter Pater (2013). “The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry”, p.2, Courier Corporation

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• Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it.

  Roy Lichtenstein

  Art, People, Purpose

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• 

  I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Inspirational, Funny, Motivational

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• The minute I start to talk about acting, I realize that I can't. You know, it's an abstract thing, a little bit mysterious even if you do it for a living.

  Christopher Walken

  Acting, Littles, Mysterious

  "Interview: Christopher Walken" By Jeff Otto, www.ign.com. October 6, 2004.

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• Color is for me the purest form of expression, the purest abstract reality.

  Jim Hodges

  Reality, Expression, Color

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• As I say, I as an abstract artist was active politically.

  Lee Krasner

  Artist, Active

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• I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words.

  Georges Simenon

  Writing, Simple, Earth

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• It makes no difference whether a work is naturalistic or abstract; every visual expression follows the same fundamental laws

  Hans Hofmann

  Expression, Law, Differences

  Hans Hofmann, Sara T. Weeks, Bartlett H. Hayes (1967). “Search for the Real: And Other Essays”, p.63, MIT Press

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