“In Abstract Expressionism the paintings symbolize the idea of ground-directedness as opposed to object-directedness. You put something down, react to it, put something else down, and the painting itself becomes a symbol of this. The difference is that rather than symbolize this ground-directedness I do an object-directed appearing thing. There is humor here. The work is still ground-directed; the fact that it's an eyebrow or an almost direct copy of something is unimportant. The ground-directedness is in the painter's mind and not immediately in apparent in the painting. Pop Art makes the statement that ground-directedness is not a quality that the painting has because of what it looks like…”

— Roy Lichtenstein

Source: 1960's, What is Pop Art? Interviews with eight painters' (1963), pp. 25-27

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Roy Lichtenstein 15

American pop artist 1923–1997

E. Lockhart book We Were Liars

Source: We Were Liars

“That's the trouble, a sex symbol becomes a thing. But if I'm going to be a symbol of something, I'd rather it be sex than some of the things we've got symbols of… I just hate to be a thing.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Comment on her sex symbol status, quoted in Ms. magazine (August 1972) p. 40

“It is precisely the essential feature of egoism that it does not apprehend the full value of the isolated self. The egoist sees himself only with regard to the others, as a member of society who wishes to possess and acquire more than the others. Self-directedness or other-directedness have no essential bearing on the specific quality of love or hatred. These acts are different in themselves, quite independently of their direction”

Max Scheler (1874–1928) German philosopher

Source: Das Ressentiment im Aufbau der Moralen (1912), L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 96

“Until Abstract Expressionism you had to have something to paint about, some kind of subject matter. Even though Kandinsky and w:Arthur Dove were improvising earlier, it didn't take. They had to have symbols, suggested natural images or geometry, which was something real structurally. That gave them something to paint about. What was new was the idea that something you looked at could be like something you heard.”

Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) American artist

Kenneth Noland, p. 8
Conversation with Karen Wilkin' (1986-1988)

“There is imagery. Symbolism is a difficult idea. I'm not a symbolist. In other words, these are painting experiences. I don't decide in advance that am going to paint a definite experience, but in the act of painting, it becomes a genuine experience for me. It's not symbolism any more than it's calligraphy. I'm not painting bridge constructions, skyscrapers or laundry tickets.... I don't paint a given object – a figure or a table; I paint an organization that becomes a painting.... it's not these things that get me started on a painting.”

Franz Kline (1910–1962) American painter

1958
1960's, Talks with Seventeen Artists, 1962

“Broad views about life have shrunk into religions, and we have been turned into their symbols. They regard us as empty symbols. Symbols of a religion, a nation. We mustn’t be trapped by that. In this war, let that be the ground of your contest. A ground that cannot be reduced to definition and detail.”

Urvashi Butalia (1952) Feminist and historian

Urvashi Butalia, Katha: Short Stories by Indian Women

“There was something about the self-confession and self-confusion of Abstract expressionism – as though the man and the work were the same – that personally always put me off because at that time my focus was in the opposite direction.”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 21st Century, Robert Rauschenberg, Works, Writings and Interviews, 2006, p. 37

“In my painting, negative space is never arbitrary. (I believe lithographs to be colored marks printed on a ground – the paper and the measure of the ground and the marks are to be considered of equal importance). In my painting, the painting is the subject rather than the subject the painting.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, p. unknown : 'Notes from 1969'

“A cross could be a shape for expressing something spacious; such as the coordinators of space. That could be called its first significance or its first relevance. A cross could equally stand for crossing something out. It could also be a sign of obstruction. An overturned cross, an X so to speak, could be the symbol of mystery, something for the other side. Then I could paint a cross in such a way that a connection is made between two bars, and in doing so convert it into a symbol of the unlimited. So, many different crosses and X symbols occur in my works.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

quote from 1988
1981 - 1990
Source: Tàpies, Werke auf Papier 1943 – 2003, Achim Sommer, Kunsthalle Emden, Altana 2004, p. 27

“I always get into arguments, with people who want to retain the old values in painting — the humanistic values that they always find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object..”

Frank Stella (1936) American artist

Quotes, 1960 - 1970
Source: LIFE http://books.google.com/books?id=XUoEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA49, Vol. 64, nr. 3, 19 January 1968, p. 49

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