“From the day that the impressionists liberated painting, the modern picture set out at once the structure itself on contrasts; instead of submitting to a subject, the painter makes an insertion and uses a subject in the service of purely plastic means.... [the contemporary painter] must prepare himself in order to confer a maximum of plastic effect on means that have not yet been used. He must not become an imitator of the new visual objectivity, but be a sensibility completely subject to the new state of things.”

—  Fernand Léger

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 14
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

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Fernand Léger photo
Fernand Léger 42
French painter 1881–1955

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“A thought that has found a plastic expression must continue to expand in keeping with its own plastic idiom. A plastic idea must be expressed with plastic means just as a musical idea is expressed with musical means, or a literary idea with verbal means. Neither music nor literature are wholly translatable into other art forms; and so a plastic art cannot be created through a superimposed literary meaning. The artist who attempts to do so produces nothing more than a show-booth. He contents himself with visual story-telling. He subjects himself to a mechanistic kind of thinking which disintegrates into fragments.”

Hans Hofmann (1880–1966) American artist

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“Kandinsky, Wassily – painter, printmaker and author – the first painter to base painting on purely pictorial means of expression and abandon objects in his pictures.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote of Wassily Kandinsky, 1919 - his self-characterisation in 'Das Kunstblatt', 1919; as cited in 'Klee & Kandinsky', 2015 exhibition text, Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau Munich, 2015-2016 https://www.zpk.org/en/exhibitions/review_0/2015/klee-kandinsky-969.html
1916 -1920

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“However, new plasticism is pure painting [in contrast with the opinion of Theo van Doesburg, then]: the means of expression still are form and color, though these are completely interiorized; the straight line and flat color remain purely pictorial means of expression.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

Fernand Léger photo

“The Impressionists were the first [painters] to reject the absolute value of the subject and to consider its value to be merely relative... In Paul Cezanne's letters I notice ideas like these: 'Objects must turn, recede, and live. I wish to make something lasting from impressionism, like the art in the museums'....'For an impressionist, to paint after nature is not to paint the object, but to express sensations'....'After having looked at the old masters, one must take haste to leave them and to verify in one's self the instincts, the sensations that dwell in us.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 11
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Fernand Léger photo

“Naturally, in order to find in this break [in the visual perception] with time-honored habits a basis for a new pictorial harmony and a plastic means of dealing with life and movement, there must be an artistic sensibility far in advance of the normal vision of the crowd.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 12
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Theo van Doesburg photo

“The development of plastic art is determined by the will to visualize. Art of the past represented the subjective vision of 'naturalistic relationships'. Neoplasticism embodies a subjective vision of 'plastic' relationships… Pure thought, which does not signify a concept derived from natural phenomena but which is contained in numbers, measures, relationships and abstract lines, is revealed conceptually (as Reason) by Chinese, Greek and German philosophy, and aesthetically by contemporary Neoplasticism [= De Stijl.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote in Van Doesburg's art-review, published in: 'Thought – Vision – Creation', in De Stijl Vol ll, 2 December 1918; as quoted in 'Theo van Doesburg', Joost Baljeu, Studio Vista, London 1974, pp. 108–109
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Fernand Léger photo

“Contrast = dissonance, and hence a maximum expressive effect. I will take as an example a commonplace subject: the visual effect of curled and round puffs of smoke rising between houses. You want to convey their plastic value... Here you have the best example on which to apply research into multiplicative intensities. Concentrate your curves with the greatest possible variety without breaking up their mass; frame them by means of the hard, dry relationship of the surfaces of the houses, dead surfaces that will acquire movement by being colored in contrast to the central mass and being opposed by live forms; you will obtain a maximum effect.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 14
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1910's, Contemporary Achievements in Painting, 1914

Jackson Pollock photo

“Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age we're living in... All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims – the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source, they work from within.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

Source: 1950's, Interview by William Wright, Summer 1950, p. 140

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“In art progress does not consist in extension, but in the knowledge of limits.
Limitation of means determines style, engenders new form, and give impulses to creation.
Limited means often constitute the charm and force of primitive painting. Extension, on the contrary, leads the arts to decadence.
New means, new subjects.
The subject is not the object; it is a new unity, a lyricism which grows completely from the means.”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

Source: 1908 - 1920, quotes from Artists on Art...(1972), p. 423 - short quotes by Georges Braque on 'Means' - Paris, 1917

Jackson Pollock photo

“The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject-matter outside themselves. Modern painters work in a different way. They work from within.”

Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) American artist

Quote of Pollock in a radio interview (1951); as quoted in Lives of the Great Twentieth Century Artists', (1986) Edward Lucie-Smith, p. 263
1950's

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