Mark Tobey: Man

“I am accused often of too much experimentation.... but what else should I do when all other factors of man are in the same condition. I thrust forward into space as science and the rest do.”

Mark Tobey

Tobey's quote from an exhibition catalogue, Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1951; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 46
1950's

Science

“We have tried to fit man into abstraction, but he does not fit.”

Mark Tobey

Statement in his Bahai lecture, Oct 30, 1951, as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 104
1950's

“Our ground today is not so much the national or the regional ground as it is the understanding of this single earth. The earth has been round for some time now, but not in man’s relation to man, nor in the understanding of the arts of each as a part of that roundness. As usual we have occupied ourselves too much with the outer, the objective, at the expense of the inner world wherein tie true roundness lies... America more than any other country is placed geographically to lead in this understanding., and if from past methods of behaviour she has constantly looked towards Europe, today she must assume her position, Janus-faced, toward Asia, for in not too long a time the waves of the Orient shall wash heavily upon her shores. All this is deeply related with her growth in the arts, particularly upon the Pacific slopes. Of this I am aware. Naturally my work will reflect such a condition and so it is not surprising to me when an Oriental responds to a painting of mine as well as an American or an European..”

Mark Tobey

Quote from Fourteen Americans, Mark Tobey, exhibition catalogue MOMA New York, 1946, p. 70
1940's

World , Art , Understanding , Nature

“The root of all religions, from the Baha'i point of view, is based on the theory that man will gradually come to understand the unity of the world and the oneness of mankind. It teaches that all the prophets are one – that science and religion are the two great powers which must be balanced if man is to become mature. I feel my work has been influenced by these beliefs. I've tried to decentralize and interpenetrate so that all parts of a painting are of related value.”

Mark Tobey

as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 60
posthumous Quotes

World , Religion , Feeling , Understanding

“On the third floor of Manning's Coffee Shop in the Farmer's Market in Seattle confronting the Sound, the windows are opaque with fog. Sitting here in the long deserted room, I feel suspended enveloped by a white silence. Two floors below, the farmers are bending over their long rows of fruit and vegetables; washing and arranging their produce under intense lights shaded by circular green shades. Above, where I sit, the world seems obliterated from all save memory; abstracted without the feeling of being divorced from one’s roots. My eye keeps focusing upon the opaque windows [an equivalent of the picture plane]. Suddenly the vision is disturbed by the shape of a gull floating silently across the width of the window, a line of movement drawn across the picture surface. Then space again. In opposing lines to the gull's flight, the Sound moves northward through the Inland Passage... It is true that trains run daily out of Seattle to points East and South, but my mind takes but little cognizance of this fact. To me Seattle seems pocketed. There is only one way out: Alaska, toward the North! Swerving to the South, there is the Orient, although in San Francisco I feel the Orient rolling in with its tides. My imagination, it would seem, has its own geography.”

Mark Tobey

Source: 1950's, In: Reminiscence and Reverie, 1951, pp. 45, 46

World , Way , Feeling , Imagination