Piet Mondrian Quotes
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..how the landlord has had my room cleaned by Snow White and the squirrel has whitewashed the walls with his tail signed: - 'Sleepy'.
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You must have heard that last autumn I almost got married, but I am glad I realized in time that it had been an illusion, all those beautiful things. Although I have always lived for art, I am also attracted to the beautiful in life and so I sometimes do things that seem strange for me.
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I believe that at times such as these my modest efforts may be useful to mankind. I have shown how the new art has succeeded in bringing about pure relationships, and furthermore how these can be created in day-to-day life. Mondrian tried to convince the Dutch publisher Stols to publish his new manuscript 'L'art et la vie'
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Art will not only continue but will realise itself more and more. By the unification of architecture, sculpture and painting a new plastic reality will be created.
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Only now 1943 I become conscious that my work in black, white and little color planes has been merely 'drawing' in oil color. In drawing, the lines are the principal means of expressions.. .In painting, however, the lines are absorbed by the color planes; but the limitations of the planes show themselves as lines and conserve their great value.
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After your high-handed improvement(?) of 'Neo-plasticism' any co-operation is quite impossible for me.. .For the rest sans rancune - Piet Mondriaan.
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The subjectivization of the universal in art brings the universal downward on one hand, while on the other it helps raise the individual toward the universal.
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If the masc. masculine is the vertic. vertical line, then a man will recognize this element in the rising line of a forest; in the horizont. horizontal lines of the sea he will see his complement. Woman, with the horizont. line as element, sees herself in the recumbent lines of the sea, and her complement in the vert. lines of the forest.
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I am searching pure expression of that incomprehensible power, which works universally.
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The spiritual (i.e. the supersensory) has many degrees; thus, the term 'spiritual' is used both for the scale of degrees away from the physical towards the spirit, but also only for the spiritual proper.
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Modern man - although a unity of body, mind, and soul - exhibits a changed consciousness: every expression of his life has today a different aspect, that is, an aspect more positively abstract.
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I am searching for the proper harmony of rhythm and unchanging proportion, as I wrote in the article. And I cannot tell you how difficult it is. Mondrian is reacting on Van Doesburg criticism of the strong domination of the regular grid in Mondrian's latest paintings
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The artist make things move, and is moved. He is policeman, motor car, everything at once. He who makes things move also creates rest. That which aesthetically is brought to rest is art.
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Gradually I became aware c. 1914-1918 that Cubism did not accept the logical consequences of its own discoveries; it was not developing abstraction towards its ultimate goal: the expression of pure reality.
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Art is higher than reality and has no direct relation to reality. To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual. We find ourselves in the presence of an abstract art. Art should be above reality, otherwise it would have no value for man.
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..reality reveals itself by substantial, palpable forms, accumulated or dispersed in empty space.. ..these forms are part of that space and.. ..the space between them appears as form, a fact which evidences the unity of form and space.
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The most advanced minds as well as the least advanced are obliged to use the same words. If we adopt new words, it will be even more difficult - if not impossible - to make ourselves understood. The new man must therefore express himself in conventional language.
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The balanced relation is the purest representation of universality, of the harmony and unity which are inherent characteristics of the mind.
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Paris, as modern city is beautiful in its perfection, but perfection means death and decay. Thus interfering with the process of dying is a crime against perfection: it stands in the way of a higher perfection.
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We arrive at a portrayal of other things, such as the laws governing matter. These are the great generalities – Which do not change.
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jazz and Neo-Plasticism are highly revolutionary phenomena: they are destructive constructive. They do not destroy the actual content of form, but rather deepen form only in order to elevate it to a new order. They break the bonds of 'form as individuality' in order to make possible a universal unity.
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I am very glad that the criticism is what it is. It is all right that way. In complete opposition to our direction. Otherwise we De Stijl-artists would have nothing to do. I got another impression from your letter, but it is much better this way. There we see again: we have straightly to oppose the whole to-do, à part.
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Human culture reveals an opposition: diminution of the instinctive faculties and development of the intuitive capacity. A cultivation of instinctive faculties produces human degeneration; a cultivation of intuitive capacities creates human progress.
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We must look not to the negative (the misery, the bestial in life), although we undergo it and sympathize with it, but rather to the burgeoning life around us, which is strengthened by the negative.