“No, the artists are in a state of belated Age of Reason. They want to get hold of things, like Mondrian. He was a fantastic artist, but now when we read his ideas and his idea of Neo-Plasticism [= De Stijl ] – pure plasticity – it’s kind of silly, I think. I mean, not for him, but I think one could spend one's life having this desire to be in and outside at the same time. He could see a future life and a future city – not like me, who am absolutely not interested in seeing the future city. I'm perfectly happy to be alive now.”

— Willem de Kooning

Quote of De Kooning from an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Location', Spring 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 49
1960's

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Willem de Kooning 38

Dutch painter 1904–1997

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“Elementarism has been born partly in reaction to an over-dogmatic and often narrow-minded application of NeoPlasticism [a critic on his former artist-companion Piet Mondrian, partly as its consequence but ultimately from what is primarily a radical correction of Neo-plastic ideas. Elementarism rejects the demands of pure statics which led to sterility and to the laming of creative potentialities. Instead of denying Time and Space, Elementarism acknowledge these elements to be the most elementary means for creating a new plastic expression... In contrast to the Neo-plastic [= De Stijl] manner of expression, which is restricted to two dimensions [the plane], Elementarism acknowledges a form of plastic expression in four dimensions, the realm of space-time. In opposition to the orthogonal style of plastic expression, which is 'homogeneous' with natural construction, Elementarism postulates a 'heterogeneous' contrasting, unstable manner of plastic expression based upon planes oblique in relation to the static, perpendicular axis of gravitation”

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

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“An epoch can only be reproduced by its own artists, I mean by the artists who lived in it. I hold the artists of one century basically incapable of reproducing the aspect of a past or future century-in other words, of painting the past or the future.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

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“I still think that Boccioni was a great artist and a passionate man. I like El Lissitsky's painting very much. But Mondrian that great merciless artist, is the only one who had nothing left over. The point they all had in common was to be both inside and outside at the same time. A new of likeness!... for me to be inside and outside is to be in an unheated studio with broken windows in the winter.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

De Kooning's speech 'What Abstract Art means to me' on the symposium 'What is Abstract At' - at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 5 February, 1951, n.p.
1950's

“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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“I wished to go completely outside and to make a symbolic start for my enterprise of regenerating the life of human kind within the body of society and to prepare a positive future in this context… I can see such a use for the future as representing the really progressive character of the idea of understanding art when it is related to the life of humankind within the social body in the future.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Quote of Beuys, in Studio International Vol. 195, (1981), p. 46
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“Having red several of your books, I wonder if you [ Rudolf Steiner, the German founder of anthroposophy] could find the time to read my brochure 'Le Néo-Plasticisme', which I am closing. I believe that Neo-Plasticism is the art of the foreseeable future for all true anthroposophists and theosophists. Neo-Plasticism creates harmony through the equivalence of the two extremes: the universal and the individual. The former by 'revelation', the latter by 'deduction'... It was impossible to bring about an equilibrium of relationships other than by destroying the 'form', and replacing it by a new 'universal' expressive means.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Quote from Mondrian's letter to Rudolf Steiner, c. 1921-23; as cited in Abstract Painting, Michel Seuphor, Dell Publishing Co 1964, p. 83-85
1920's

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Willem de Kooning 38

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