Abstraction Quotes

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

  Lucian Freud

  Motivational, Art, Real

  42 Copy quote

• Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature.

  Josef Albers

  Real, Abstract Art

  Brenda Danilowitz, Josef Albers, Josef and Anni Albers Foundation (2001). “The prints of Josef Albers: a catalogue raisonné, 1915-1976”, Hudson Hills

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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”

  95 Copy quote

  Show source

• The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty.

  Piet Mondrian

  Art, Emotion, Modern

  "Natural Reality and Abstract Reality" by Piet Mondrian, published in De Stijl magazine, 1919.

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• The purpose of abstraction is not to be vague, but to create a new semantic level in which one can be absolutely precise.

  Edsger Dijkstra

  Simplicity, Design, Purpose

  50 Copy quote

• To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.

  Ben Shahn

  Essence, Matter, Abstract

  Ben Shahn (1957). “The Shape of Content”, p.63, Harvard University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The story of evolution unfolds with increasing levels of abstraction.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Stories, Levels, Evolution

  Ray Kurzweil (2012). “How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed”, p.1948, Penguin

  15 Copy quote

  Show source

• Pure drawing is an abstraction. Drawing and colour are not distinct, everything in nature is coloured.

  Paul Cezanne

  Drawing, Colour, Pure

  11 Copy quote

• Poetry is an abstraction bloodied.

  Wallace Stevens

  Poetry Is

  10 Copy quote

• Here is God's purpose - For God, to me, it seems, is a verb not a noun, proper or improper; is the articulation not the art, objective or subjective; is loving, not the abstraction "love" commanded or entreated; is knowledge dynamic, not legislative code, not proclamation law, not academic dogma, not ecclesiastic canon. Yes, God is a verb, the most active, connoting the vast harmonic reordering of the universe from unleashed chaos of energy.

  R. Buckminster Fuller

  Art, Law, Energy

  R. Buckminster Fuller (1967). “No More Secondhand God”, p.28, Estate of R. Buckminster Fuller

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I think, with abstraction, it's easy to fall into a sort of pastiche.

  Joe Bradley

  Fall, Thinking, Easy

  Interview With Laura Hoptman, www.interviewmagazine.com. May 15, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• Seek art and abstraction in nature by dreaming in the presence of it.

  Paul Gauguin

  Dream, Art, Nature

  13 Copy quote

• The paradox is now fully established that the utmost abstractions are the true weapons with which to control our thought of concrete fact.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Discovery, Weapons, Facts

  Alfred North Whitehead (1997). “Science and the Modern World”, p.32, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Why do you love the woman you're in love with? Because she is. And that, after all, is God's own definition of Himself; I am that I am. The girl is who she is. Some of her isness spills over and impregnates the entire universe. Objects and events cease to be mere representations of classes and become their own uniqueness; cease to be illustrations of verbal abstractions and become fully concrete. Then you stop being in love, and the universe collapses, with an almost audible squeak of derision, into its normal insignificance.

  Aldous Huxley

  Girl, Being In Love, Illustration

  8 Copy quote

• Abstraction is the way to the heart - it is not the heart itself.

  John Piper

  Heart, Way

  4 Copy quote

• I prefer to see with closed eyes.

  Josef Albers

  Eye, Perception, Closed Eyes

  Arts/Canada, Vol. 23, (p. 46), 1966.

  106 Copy quote

  Show source

• Can one have love? If we could, love would need to be a thing, a substance that one can have, own, possess. The truth is, there is no such thing as love. Love is an abstraction, perhaps a goddess or an alien being, although nobody has ever seen this goddess. In reality, there exists only the act of loving. To love is a productive activity. It implies caring for, knowing, responding, affirming, enjoying: the person, the tree, the painting, the idea. It means bringing to life, increasing his/her/its aliveness. It is a process, self-renewing and self increasing.

  Erich Fromm

  Love, Mean, Caring

  8 Copy quote

• Everything will be all right - you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves.

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Military, Thinking, Drawing

  The Times, June 27, 1955.

  27 Copy quote

  Show source

• From the smallest necessity to the highest religious abstraction, from the wheel to the skyscraper, everything we are and everything we have comes from one attribute of man - the function of his reasoning mind.

  Ayn Rand

  Religious, Men, Mind

  81 Copy quote

• I will say without reservations that from my point of view there can be no abstractions. Any shape or area that has not the pulsating concreteness of real flesh and bones, its vulnerability to pleasure or pain is nothing at all. Any picture that does not provide the environment in which the breath of life can be drawn does not interest me.

  Mark Rothko

  Pain, Real, Views

  "Mark Rothko: A Biography". Book by James E. B. Breslin, p. 170, 1990.

  37 Copy quote

  Show source

• Hear this or not, as you will. Learn it now, or later -- the world has time. Routine, repetition, tedium, monotony, ephemeracy, inconsequence, abstraction, disorder, boredom, angst, ennui -- these are the true hero's enemies, and make no mistake, they are fearsome indeed. For they are real.

  David Foster Wallace

  Real, Mistake, Hero

  23 Copy quote

• By object is meant some element in the complex whole that is defined in abstraction from the whole of which it is a distinction.

  John Dewey

  Elements, Distinction, Complexes

  John Dewey, Jo Ann Boydston, Paul Kurtz (2008). “The Later Works, 1925-1953: 1929-1930”, p.246, SIU Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Dancing is the loftiest, the most moving, the most beautiful of the arts, because it is no mere translation or abstraction from life; it is life itself.

  Havelock Ellis

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

  The Dance of Life ch. 2 (1923)

  35 Copy quote

  Show source

• An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Should Have, Taste, Pardon

  9 Copy quote

• We think of the number "five" as applying to appropriate groups of any entities whatsoever - to five fishes, five children, five apples, five days... We are merely thinking of those relationships between those two groups which are entirely independent of the individual essences of any of the members of either group. This is a very remarkable feat of abstraction; and it must have taken ages for the human race to rise to it

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Children, Taken, Independent

  7 Copy quote