Abstraction Quotes - Page 20

• Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Years, Age

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• Writing is the hammer & chisel that breaks down the established way of thinking. A concrete event, then an abstraction. An image, then a thought. Finally, writing builds another establishment with the fragments.

  Diane Glancy

  Writing, Thinking, Events

  Diane Glancy (1996). “Claiming Breath”, p.23, U of Nebraska Press

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• To make someone an icon is to make him an abstraction, and abstractions are incapable of vital communication with living people.

  David Foster Wallace

  Communication, Icons, People

  David Foster Wallace (2005). “Consider the Lobster: And Other Essays”, p.157, Hachette UK

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• In 'Self Comes to Mind' I pay a lot of attention to simple creatures without brains or minds, because those 'cartooned abstractions of who we are' operate on precisely the same principles that we do.

  Antonio Damasio

  Simple, Self, Brain

  "Self Comes To Mind". Interview with Jonah Lehrer, www.wired.com. November 8, 2010.

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• Essentially, perspective is a form of abstraction. It simplifies the relationship between eye, brain and object. It is an ideal view, imagined as being seen by a one-eyed, motionless person who is clearly detached from what he sees. It makes a God of the spectator, who becomes the person on whom the whole world converges, the Unmoved Onlooker.

  Robert Hughes

  Eye, Views, Perspective

  Robert Hughes (2015). “The Spectacle of Skill: New and Selected Writings of Robert Hughes”, p.25, Vintage

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• Cancer begins and ends with people. In the midst of scientific abstraction, it is sometimes possible to forget this one basic fact. Doctors treat diseases but they also treat people, and this precondition of their professional existence sometimes pulls them in two directions at once.

  June Goodfield

  Cancer, Doctors, Two

  June Goodfield (1975). “The Siege of Cancer”

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• The dynamic element in my philosophy, taken as a whole, can be seen as an obstinate and untiring battle against the spirit of abstraction.

  Gabriel Marcel

  Philosophy, Taken, Battle

  Gabriel Marcel (1952). “Men against humanity”

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• Abstraction is itself an abstract word and has no single meaning ... Every word in our language is abstract, because it represents something else.

  Eric Maisel

  Language, Abstract

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• Abstract art is a fundamental distrust of the theory of reality concocted by the eyes.

  Robert Breault

  Art, Eye, Reality

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• If I choose abstraction over reality, it is because I consider it the lesser chaos.

  Robert Breault

  Reality, Chaos, Ifs

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• The reader must come armed , in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one's responses are isolated, one'sintellect thrown back on its own resourses. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity.

  Neil Postman

  Reading, Community, Intellectual

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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, Abstract, Existence

  FaceBook post by Gerhard Richter from Jun 07, 2013

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• Even an abstract form has to have a likeness.

  Willem de Kooning

  Abstract, Form

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• Abstraction generally involves implication, suggestion and mystery, rather than obvious description.

  Robert Genn

  Suggestions, Mystery, Description

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• I expect of abstraction as much as what imagery does for me... to carry meaning.

  Kay WalkingStick

  Doe, Imagery

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• Abstract art has helped us to experience the emotional power inherent in pure form.

  Anton Ehrenzweig

  Art, Emotional, Abstract

  Anton Ehrenzweig (1967). “The Hidden Order of Art: A Study in the Psychology of Artistic Imagination”, p.147, Univ of California Press

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• A hint - don't paint too much direct from nature. Art is an abstraction! study nature then brood on it and treasure the creation which will result, which is the only way to ascend towards God - to create like our Divine Master.

  Paul Gauguin

  Art, Hints, Treasure

  Paul Gauguin (2003). “Letters to His Wife and Friends”, Museum of Fine Arts Boston

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• True to her inveterate habit, rationalism reverts to 'principles,' and thinks that when an abstraction once is named, we own an oracular solution.

  William James

  Thinking, Principles, Habit

  William James (2013). “Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New Thought Edition - Secret Library)”, p.105, Lulu Press, Inc

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