“It is not the subject which matters but the translation of the subject into the abstraction of the surface by means of painting. Therefore I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.”

Source: 1930s, On my Painting (1938), pp. 12-13

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Max Beckmann52

German painter, draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer 1884–1950

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“.. the word 'abstract' comes from the light tower of the philosophers.... one of their spotlights that they have particularly focused on 'Art'....(abstraction was) not so much what you could paint but rather what you could not paint. You could not paint a house or a tree or a mountain. It was then that subject matter came into existence as something you ought not have.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

Willem de Kooning, MOMA Bull., pp. 4, 6; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 104.
1980's

“I believe that nothing can be more abstract, more unreal, than what we actually see. We know that all we can see of the objective world as human beings, never really exists as we see and understand it. Matter exists, of course, but has no intrinsic meaning of its own, such as the meanings that we attach to it. Only we can know that a cup is a cup, that a tree is a tree..”

Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) Italian painter

Source: 1945 - 1964, Interview, 1960, p. 107

“We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real then a line, a colour, a surface. A woman, a tree, a cow; are these concrete elements in a painting? No. A woman, a tree and a cow are concrete only in nature; in painting they are abstract, illusionistic, vague and speculative. However, a plane is a plane, a line is a line and no more or no less than that. 'Concrete paintin.”

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

Spirit has arrived at the age of maturity...
Quote in 'Comments on the basic of concrete painting', Paris, January 1930, in 'Art Concret', April 1930, pp. 2–4
1926 – 1931

“I really like painting on unusual base, such as zinc plates, which are already subjected to rain. These are old plates, spoiled by time and weather. I paint very subtle paintings on such a ground. On the other hand, paintings on a sponge, which may seem harsh in terms of subject matter – are, contrary to appearances, very soft and pleasant. It is nice, for example, to move them and hang them.”

Tomasz Vetulani (1965) Polish artist

There is no threat. Weapons and colour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqfjr78Pyfs, video, Galeria Olympia, 23 Novmeber 2017 (in Polish)

“[An artist must apply] his personal faculties to the ideas and the events of the times in which he lives... [A]rt in painting should consist only of the representation of things which that are visible and tangible to the artist. Every age should be represented only by its own artists, that is to say, by the artist who have lived in it. I also maintain that painting is an essentially concrete art form and can exist only of the representation of both real and existing things... An abstract object, not visible, nonexistent, is not within the domain of painting.”

Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) French painter

Quote in an open letter ('Credo'), (Paris, end of December 1861), published in the 'Courier du Dimanche', (addressed to prospective students); as quoted in Letters of Gustave Courbet, transl. & ed. Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, University of Chicago Press 1992, pp. 203-204
1860s

“I mean, the official definition of Surrealism is to make a work automatically without a priori aesthetic or moral conditions, which is exactly what we do [artist in New York School / Abstract Expressionism]. At the same time Surrealism was an assault, - with a few exceptions: Giacometti, Arp and Miro - on the 'purity' of painting. I mean mean, on making painting - means themselves speak, without reliance on literature; and that second insistence of Surrealism, Americans really rejected. So that historically.... Abstract Expressionism is in part, I think, a fusion of certain Surrealist means, above all plastic 'automatism' with the Cubist's insistence that the picture speaks as a picture in strictly pictorial language.”

Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) American artist

first published in 'Metro', 1962; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 82
1960s, Interview with David Sylvester', (1960)

“For want of the apparatus of propositional functions, many logicians have been driven to the conclusion that there are unreal objects. It is argued, e. g., by Meinong, that we can speak about "the golden mountain," "the round square," and so on; we can make true propositions of which these are the subjects; hence they must have some kind of logical being, since otherwise the propositions in which they occur would be meaningless. In such theories, it seems to me, there is a failure of that feeling for reality which ought to be preserved even in the most abstract studies. Logic, I should maintain, must no more admit a unicorn than zoology can; for logic is concerned with the real world just as truly as zoology, though with its more abstract and general features.”

Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist

Source: 1910s, Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919), Ch. 16: Descriptions

“The time of the often criticized art without real subject [l'art pour l'art] and the art without object [ Abstract art ] seems to be over. We are experiencing a new return to the meaningful subject, which the common people can understand”

Fernand Léger (1881–1955) French painter

Fernand Léger - The Later Years, catalogue ed. Nicolas Serota, published by the Trustees of the Whitechapel Art gallery, London, Prestel Verlag, 1988, p. 12
Quotes of Fernand Leger, 1980's

“The one art that is abstract and pure enough to have the one problem and possibility, in our time and timelessness, of the 'one single grand original problem' is pure abstract painting. Abstract painting is not just another school or movement or style but the first truly unmannered and untrammeled and un-entangled, styleless, universal painting. No other art or painting is detached or empty or immaterial enough.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

Source: 1956 - 1967, Art-as-Art Dogma' part II, (1964), p. 157

“…this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse… If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.”

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer

Quoted in: Paul Jones (2011), The Sociology of Architecture: Constructing Identities. p. 47.
Other explanation by Picasso of the Guernica.
Quotes, 1930's

“It is not the subject which matters but the translation of the subject into the abstraction of the surface by means of painting. Therefore I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.”

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Max Beckmann52

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