Abstraction Quotes

249 quotes by 201 authors

In past times when one lived in contact with nature, abstraction was easy; it was done unconsciously. Now in our denaturalized age abstraction becomes an… — Piet Mondrian
A harmonious combination... enough abstraction that the image is sustained by the eye; enough reality that it is sustained by reason and experience. Share this… — Jean Helion
No doubt, in complete abstraction one has a feeling of a great shock, if not an explosion, and in approaching the real, one feels health… — Jean Helion
To think of abstraction as an end in itself is undoubtedly letting oneself be led into a cul-de-sac and can only lead to exhaustion and… — Jacob Epstein
Abstraction returned as soon as artists tried to come to closer grips with reality than naturalistic representation permitted... — Sigfried Giedion
No matter how brilliant, amusing or intelligent the creek of abstraction, Dadaism, Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 20th century was, it didn't much affect the… — Mark Kostabi
Those who tell you that the territorial question is an abstraction, that you can never colonize another territory without the African slavetrade, are both deaf… — Robert Toombs
I guess I have no motivation to make an abstract painting, even if they sometimes read as abstract. I think, with abstraction, it's easy to… — Joe Bradley
Time is an absurdity. An abstraction. The only thing that matters is this moment. — Jonathan Nolan
If a painting contains no abstraction nor impressionistic elements, it is a kite that will never fly. But if the painting completely breaks the connection… — Wu Guanzhong
Mystic equality lies in abstraction, not in having or in doing, which are processes. In function and process, one man, one part, must of necessity… — D. H. Lawrence
When we hear complaints of the wretchedness or vanity of human life, the proper answer to them would be that there is hardly any one… — William Hazlitt
WHATEVER Life may really be, it is to us an abstraction: for the word is a generalised term to signify that which is common to… — Bill Vaughan
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
I think there's something really painful about your identity being entirely composed of ghosts. For me, I didn't want to be this kid whose Dominicanness… — Junot Diaz
I felt like my parents were always involved with abstraction, and I wanted to do something very specific. — Lena Dunham
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… — Havelock Ellis
Everything will be all right - you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and… — Dag Hammarskjold
It is terrible to destroy a person's picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction. — Doris Lessing
To me, a story can be both concrete and abstract, or a concrete story can hold abstractions. And abstractions are things that really can't be… — David Lynch

Who Wrote These Abstraction Quotes

201 authors contributed a total of 249 Abstraction Quotes, led by these top contributors: