“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

Quote from De Kooning's speech 'What Abstract Art means to me' on the symposium 'What is Abstract At' - at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 5 February, 1951, n.p.
1950's

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Willem de Kooning 38

Dutch painter 1904–1997

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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

“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)

“The aesthetics of painting were always in a state of development parallel to the development of painting itself. They influenced each other and vice versa. But all of the sudden, in that famous turn of the century [1900] a few people thought they could take the bull by the horns and invent an aesthetic beforehand. After immediately disagreeing with each other, they began to form all kinds of groups, each with the idea of freeing art... The question as they saw it, was not so much what you could paint, but what you could not paint. You could not paint a house or a tree or a mountain. It was then that the subject matter came into existence as something you ought not to have.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

De Kooning's speech 'What Abstract Art means to me' on the symposium 'What is Abstract At' - at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 5 February, 1951, n.p.
1950's

“Out of all the things you could not have there were some things that you could have and one of those was to know when you were happy and to enjoy all of it while it was there and it was good.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

“They [Richter always works on a number of his abstract paintings at the same time] feed off one another… At the beginning, I feel totally free, and it's fun, like being a child. The paintings can look good for a day or an hour. Over time, they change. In the end, you become like a chess player. It takes me longer than some people to recognize their quality, their situation - to realize when they are finished. Finally, one day I enter the room and say, 'Checkmate.' Then sometimes I need a break, a quiet job, like a landscape. But I always need to paint abstracts again. I need that pleasure.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

after 2000, Gerhard Richter: An Artist Beyond Isms' (2002)

“If you could see my legs when I take my boots off, you'd form some idea of what unrequited affection is.”

Charles Dickens book Dombey and Son

Source: Dombey and Son (1846-1848), Ch. 48

“I doubt if a single individual could be found from the whole of mankind free from some form of insanity. The only difference is one of degree. A man who sees a gourd and takes it for his wife is called insane because this happens to very few people.”

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, and theologian

As quoted in Words from the Wise : Over 6,000 of the Smartest Things Ever Said (2007) by Rosemarie Jarski, p. 312. From The Praise of Folly.

“Is the life you seek to take worth the one you could one day create? (Savitar)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dark Side of the Moon

“Somethings in life are out of your control. you can make it a party or a tragedy. Or, you could refuse to take the next step. You could refuse to take what you wanted most because you're afraid some day you might lose it.”

Nora Roberts Vision in White

Source: Vision in White

“I got the idea to paint people, in the way I see them. From one face I take to my own idea some very characteristic features of it and then I make of the whole a picture in colors and lines, in the way how I meet that person. The whole thing becomes not at all a portrait in the usual sense... I have tried to make types, but will built in more and more personal qualities and all that kind of things... Everything will be figured out fully abstract of course, it is just a personal feeling and no system at all.”

Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) Dutch painter

translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018
(original version, written by Jacoba in German:) Meine Idee ist es die Menschen zu malen, wie ich sie sehe. Ich nehme aus einem Gesicht einige meiner Ansicht nach am meisten sprechende Züge und ich mache dann vom ganzen ein Bild in den Farben und Linien, wie die Person mir entgegentritt. Das Ganze ist gar kein Porträt im gewöhnlichen Sinne.. .Ich habe mich bemüht, jetz noch Typen zu machen und werde mehr und mehr persönliche Eigenschaften und alle mögliche hereinbringen.. .Alles muss man sich natürlich ganz abstrakt denken, es ist ein persönliches Gefühl und gar kein System.
in a letter to Herwarth Walden, 6 Feb. 1918; as cited by Arend H. Huussen Jr. in Jacoba van Heemskerck, kunstenares van het Expressionisme, Haags Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 1982, p. 20
1910's

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Willem de Kooning 38

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