Naum Gabo: Quotes about life

“I have come to the conclusion that a work of art restricted to what the artist has put in it is only a part of itself. It only attains full stature with what people and time make of it. It involves the whole complex of human relation to life. It is a mode of thinking, acting, perceiving and living.”

Naum Gabo

Quote, 1937; in Gabo's letter to Herbert Read; cited in: Cyril Connolly (1944) Horizon: a review of literature and art. Vol 9-10. p. 58
1936 - 1977

Life , People , Art , Thinking

“[The Constructive idea.. ] has revealed a universal law that the elements of a visual art such as lines, colours, shapes, possess their own forces of expression independent of any association with the external aspects of the world; that their life and action are self-conditioned psychological phenomena rooted in human nature; that those elements are not chosen by convention by any utilitarian or other reason as words and figures are, they are not merely abstract signs, but they are immediately and organically bound up with human emotions. The revelation of this fundamental law has opened up a vast field in art giving the possibility of expression to those human impulses and emotions which have been neglected.”

Naum Gabo

Naum Gabo (1937) 'Editorial', p. 7 as cited in: W. Rotzler (1989) Constructive Concepts - A History of Constructive Art from Cubism to the Present, Rizzoli.
1936 - 1977, Circle: International Survey of Constructive Art, 1937

Life , World , Law , Art

“No new artistic system will withstand the pressure of a growing new culture until the very foundation of Art will be erected on the real laws of life.
Until all artists will say with us…
All is a fiction… only life and its laws are authentic and in life only the active is beautiful and wise and strong and right, for life does not know beauty as an aesthetic measure… efficacious existence is the highest beauty.
Life knows neither good nor bad nor justice as a measure of morals… need is the highest and most just of all morals.
Life does not know rationally abstracted truths as a measure of cognizance, deed is the highest and surest of truths.
Those are the laws of life. Can art withstand these laws if it is built on an abstraction, on mirage, and fiction?…”

Naum Gabo

Quoted in: Naum Gabo, Michael Compton (1987) Naum Gabo: sixty years of constructivism. p. 8
1918 - 1935, Realistic Manifesto, 1920

Life , Truth , Justice , Law

“What we cannot express by the art of thinking, by the art of Science or philosophy or logic, we can and should express by the poetic, visual, or some other arts. It is for that reason that I consider morals and aesthetics one and the same; for they cover only one impulse, one drive inherent in our consciousness - to bring our life and all our actions into a satisfactory relationship with the events of the world, as our consciousness want it to be, in harmony with our life and according to the laws of consciousness itself - Naum Gabo”

Naum Gabo

Quote from The Quotable Artist, by Peggy Hadden; Skyhorse Publishing, Inc., 2010; not paged
undated

Life , World , Law , Art

“Space and time are the only forms on which life is built and hence art must be constructed… The realisation of our perceptions of the world in the forms of space and time is the only aim of our pictorial and plastic art… We renounce the thousand-year-old delusion in art that held the static rhythms as the only elements of the plastic and pictorial arts. We affirm in these arts a new element, the kinetic rhythms as the basic forms of our perception of real time.”

Naum Gabo

As quoted in: Fred Kleiner (2008) Intl Stdt Edition-Gardner's Art Thru/Ages: Globl Hist. Vol.2, p. 949
1918 - 1935, Realistic Manifesto, 1920

Life , World , Art , Time

“The growth of new ideas is more difficult and lengthy the deeper they are rotted in life. Resistance to them is the more obsitnate and exasperated the more persistent their growth is.”

Naum Gabo

Quote in: Herschel Browning Chipp (1968) Theories of Modern Art. p. 330
1936 - 1977, Sculpture: Carving and Construction in Space' (1937)

Life , Idea