in a letter to Alfred H. Barr, Jr. 6 November, 1955; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 34
Baziotes' quote is referring to his painting 'Pompeii', Baziotes painted in 1955
1950s
“With regard to the principle [of using symbols to represent sounds], it matters little whether the symbol is an elaborately detailed picture, a slightly stylized drawing, or a drastically abbreviated symbol of essentially abstract form. What is crucial is to recognize that the diverse forms perform the same function in representing sound. To see that writing has the form of pictures and to conclude that it is pictographic is correct in only one sense -- that of the form, but not the function, of the symbols. We can put it this way:
QUESTION: When is a pictograph not a pictograph?
ANSWER: When it represents a sound.”
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984, p. 140) http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984)
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John DeFrancis 8
American linguist 1911–2009Related quotes

Vol. II: On Symbolical Algebra and its Applications to the Geometry of Position (1845) Ch. XV, p. 59
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The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984, p. 139) http://www.pinyin.info/readings/texts/ideographic_myth.html
The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (1984)
“Art is the creation of forms symbolic of human feeling.”
Source: Feeling and Form (1953), Ch. 3, p. 40
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Source: Glamour: A World Problem (1950), Certain Preliminary Clarifications

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A Treatise on Algebra (1842)