“Genius is finding the invisible link between things.”
“Vision is the Art of seeing Things invisible.”
Thoughts on various subjects (Further thoughts on various subjects) (1745)
“To see things in the seed, that is genius.”
1970 - 1986, Some Memories of Drawings (1976)
Context: It is surprising to me to see how many people separate the objective from the abstract. Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or a tree. It is lines and colours put together so that they say something. For me that is the very basis of painting. The abstraction is often the most definite form for the intangible thing in myself that I can only clarify in paint. … I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way — things I had no words for.<!-- Also quoted in Georgia O’Keeffe: Nature and Abstraction (2007), edited by Richard Marshall, p. 13
Fifteen Americans, Exhibition catalogue, Museum of Modern Art, 1952 p. 12
1950s
“Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.”
Source: Jefferson and/or Mussolini (1935), Ch. 23
“[to see the painting].. as an object, as a real thing in itself. (quote on his Flag-paintings)”
Quote from: Abstract Art, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, p. 200
1950s
“I paint not the things I see but the feelings they arouse in me.”
1950's, Conversations With Artists, 1957
