“There were limits to what art—composed of such genres as portraiture, landscape, still life, and historical painting (the latter of which, in royal academies, enjoyed the highest esteem)—could do to show movement.”

What Art Is (2013), Chap. 1 : Wakeful Dreams

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Arthur Danto1

American art critic and philosopher 1924–2013

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Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

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“To show that this end [of art by its dissolution into real life] is only a beginning, it is essential that.... the series of galleries [of the future museum of modern art] be followed by a room in which painting and sculpture will be realized by the interior itself.... demonstrating that what is lost for art is gained for life. This room could therefore be designed for use as a lecture room, a restaurant.... as a bar with an American jazz band.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

Mondrian's reaction on a questionnaire (c. 1931?)
Quote of Mondrian, as cited in Mondrian, -The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 166
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“The highest point at which human life and art meet is in the ordinary. To look down on the ordinary is to despise what you can't have. Show me a man who fears being ordinary, and I'll show you a man who is not yet a man.”

Yukio Mishima book Thirst for Love

Source: Thirst for Love

“What I consider to do with the new course [at The Academy of Art in The Hague] is: in the morning doing large plaster and in the afternoon painting or drawing after Nature, what I am doing already for some time, and [drawing] horses in the Municipal Horse Riding School. The Director is Sir Krüger, a very charming German who has seen of course many horses and so he knows how to show me the mistakes I make, which are not few.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek <br class="br">version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Wat ik mij voorstel met de nieuwe cursus te doen is: 's morgens grootpleister en 's middags schilderen of naar de natuur teekenen. waarmede ik reeds eenige tijd bezig ben. en paarden in de Stadsrijschool. De Dir. daarvan is den Heer Krüger een alleraardigste duitscher, die nat. veel paarden gezien heeft en me dus de fouten weet te zeggen, die ik maak en die niet weinige zijn. <br class="br">early quote of Breitner in his letter to his Maecenas A.P. van Stolk, 11 April 1878; original text in RKD-Archive, The Hague https://rkd.nl/explore/excerpts/585 <br class="br">before 1890

“This is a work which ought to be in every library in Canada; perhaps, after twenty-five years or so, it might silence the recurrent hubbub about nude paintings which is a feature of our national life. Yes, they are erotic. Yes, madam, the painters are often naughty men, and the models are sometimes bad girls. But there are elements involved in the painting of the nude which draw upon what is highest in art and express what is highest in mankind. Now, may we please look at the pictures?”

Robertson Davies (1913–1995) Canadian journalist, playwright, professor, critic, and novelist

Review of The Painter's Eye and The Nude (1957).

“But one day, some painter used 'Abstraction' as a title for one of his paintings. It was a still life. And it was a very tricky title. And it wasn’t really a very good one. From then on the idea became something extra. Immediately it gave some people the idea that they could free art from itself. Until then, Art meant everything that was in it – not what you could take off it. There was only one thing you could take out of it sometime when you were in the right mood – that abstract and indefinable sensation, the aesthetic part – and still leave it were it was…”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

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1950's

“The only valid thing in art is that which cannot be explained. To explain away the mystery of a great painting – if such a feat were possible – would be irreparable harm… If there is no mystery then there is no 'poetry', the quality I value above all else in art. What do I mean by 'poetry'? It is to a painting what life is to man… For me it is a matter of harmony, of rapports, of rhythm and – most important for my own work – of 'metamorphosis”

Georges Braque (1882–1963) French painter and sculptor

1946 - 1963, interview with John Richardson' (1957)

“.. it [painting art] has never been so truly realistic, so firmly attached to its own period as it is today. A kind of painting that is realistic in the highest sense is beginning to appear, and it is here today... The advertising billboard, dictated by modern commercial needs, that brutally cuts across a landscape.... this yellow or red poster shouting in a timid landscape, is the best of possible reasons for the new painting; it topples the whole sentimental literary concept and announces the advent of plastic contrast.”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Quote, 1914, in 'Functions of Painting by Fernand Leger'; p. 12
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“Four years ago almost all of the applauded and selling art was New York School painting. It was preponderant in most galleries, which were uninclined to show anything new. The publications which praised it praised it indiscriminately and were uninterested in new developments. Much of the painting was by the "second generation" many of them epigones. Pollock was dead. Kline and Brooks had painted their last good paintings in 1956 and 1957. Guston's paintings had become soft and gray — his best ones are those around 1954 and 1955. Motherwell's and De Kooning's paintings were somewhat vague. None of these artists were criticized. In 1959 Newman's work was all right, and Rothko's was even better than before. Presumably, though none were shown in New York, Clyfford Still's paintings were all right. This lackadaisical situation was thought perfect. The lesser lights and some of their admirers were incongruously dogmatic : this painting was not only doing well but was the only art for the time. They thought it was a style. By now, it is.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd, in: Arts Yearbook. (1964) p. 23
1960s

“Here are 3 drawings that I have made for You. It will be satisfactory, if it will meet your expectation and what it is for [to make a painting]. The two landscapes are thoughts, but the one that suggests the moonlight is the castle at Doorenwaart in Gelderland. I also painted a painting of that subject which I enjoyed a lot in Amsterdam [because, purchased there by A. B. Roothaan there] (translation from original Dutch: Fons Heijnsbroek)”

Andreas Schelfhout (1787–1870) Dutch painter, etcher and lithographer

(original Dutch, citaat van Schelfhout, uit zijn brief:) Hierbij 3 teekeningen die ik voor UE. Vervaardigd hebt, het zal mij genoegelijk zijn, indien dezelve aan uwe verwachting en aan het [doel], waar voor zie dienen moeten [voor het maken van een schilderij], zullen beantwoorden. De 2 landschapjes zijn gedachten, maar het gene dat het maanlicht voorsteld, is het kasteel te Doorenwaart in Gelderland. Ik heb ook van dat zelve onderwerp een schilderij geschilderd waar van ik veel genoege gehad heb te Amsterdam [aangekocht door A. B. Roothaan aldaar]
Quote of Schelfhout in his letter to , 2 Dec. 1823; as cited in Andreas Schelfhout - landschapschilder in Den Haag, Cyp Quarles van Ufford, Primavera Pers, (ISBN 978-90-5997-066-3), Leiden, p. 49

“There were limits to what art—composed of such genres as portraiture, landscape, still life, and historical painting (the latter of which, in royal academies, enjoyed the highest esteem)—could do to show movement.”

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Arthur Danto1

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