Piet Mondrian Quotes
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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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I very much like Arp's things. I consider him the only 'pure' artist after Neo/Plasticism.
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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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Art on the contrary sought this harmony in practice of art itself. More and more in its creations it has given inwardness to that what surrounds us in nature, until, in Neo-Plasticism, nature is no longer dominant. This achievement of balance may prepare the way for the fulfillment of man and signal the end of (what we call) art.
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The surface of things gives enjoyment, their interiority gives life.
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It may be noted that in Neo-Plastic art the crucial thing is the right angel, that is, the right-angle lines. And not whether the position of the lines is vertical or horizontal.. .So it is possible to make very beautiful things while placing the lines in a diagonal position.
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In his later works Doesburg tried to destroy static expression by diagonal position of his lines. But in this way the feeling of physic equilibrium which is necessary to enjoy a work of art is lost.
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I came to the destruction of volume by the use of the plane. This I accomplished by means of lines cutting the planes. But still, the plane remained too intact. So I came to making only lines and brought the colour within the lines. Now the only problem was to destroy these lines also through mutual oppositions.
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Non-figurative art is created by establishing a dynamic rhythm of determinate mutual relations which excludes the formation of any particular form.
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Intuition enlightens and so links up with pure thought. They together become an intelligence which is not simply of the brain, which does not calculate, but feels and thinks.
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This new plastic idea will ignore the particulars of appearance, that is to say, natural form and color. On the contrary, it should find its expression in the abstraction of form and color, that is to say, in the straight line and the clearly defined primary color.
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All that is base in the masses is temporary, no doubt serving only to prevent evolution (that of the elite, as well) from proceeding too quickly and thus not becoming 'reality.'
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These universal means of expression were discovered in modern painting by a logical and gradual progress toward ever more abstract form and color. Once the solution was discovered, there followed the exact representation of relations alone, that is to say, of the essential and fundamental element in any plastic emotion of the beautiful.
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I do not know how I shall develop, but for the present, I am continuing to work within ordinary, generally known terrain, different only because of a deep substratum, which leads those who are receptive to sense the finer regions.
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The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel.
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Things are beautiful or ugly only in time and space. The new man's vision being liberated from these two factors, all is unified in one unique beauty.
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I am only satisfied insofar as I feel 'Broadway Boogie Woogie' is a definite progress, but even about this picture I am not quite satisfied. There is still too much of the old in it.
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Dear Does = Theo van Doesburg , thank you for your letter.. .I was glad to know that in principle you are in favour of the diamond hanging Mondrian's painting, he made in 1919, hanging in a rhombus and I think that in practice you will approve of this method for some of my things. You look at the thing painting itself, and not only the outward appearance..
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Composition allows the artist the greatest possible freedom, so that his subjectivity can express itself, to a certain degree, for as long as needed.
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Well, I think my paintings are fast enough already...
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Just as pure abstract art is not dogmatic, neither is it decorative.
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It is of small importance whether De Stijl still exists as a 'group'; a new style was born, a new aesthetic created; it needs only to be understood – and cultivated.
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It is not important to make many pictures but that I have one picture right.
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Reality only appears to us tragical because of the disequilibrium and confusion of its appearances.