#abstract

Do not be afraid of the word 'theory'. Yes, it can sound dauntingly abstract at times, and in the hands of some writers can appear to have precious little to do with the actual, visual world around us. Good theory however, is an awesome thing. [...] But unless we actually use it, it borders on the metaphysical and might as well not be used at all. ↗

— Richard Howells

#art #metaphysics #theory #art

Energy and motion made visible – memories arrested in space ↗

— Jackson Pollock

#art

I would put myself in the attitude to look in the eye an abstract truth, and I cannot. I blench and withdraw on this side and on that. I seem to know what he meant who said, No man can see God face to face and live. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#abstraction #fear #fear-of-truth #god #truth

Abstraction can provide stumbling blocks for people of strange intelligence. ↗

— Gustave Flaubert

#intelligence #intelligence

Height, width, and depth are the three phenomena which I must transfer into one plane to form the abstract surface of the picture, and thus to protect myself from the infinity of space. ↗

— Max Beckmann

#depth #form #height #i #infinity

No nude, however abstract, should fail to arouse in the spectator some vestige of erotic feeling, even if it be only the faintest shadow - and if it does not do so it is bad art and false morals. ↗

— Kenneth Clark

#arouse #art #bad #does #even

Everything will be all right - you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves. ↗

— Dag Hammarskjold

#drawing #everything #just #know #made

Wisdom is the abstract of the past, but beauty is the promise of the future. ↗

— Oliver Wendell Holmes

#beauty #future #past #promise #wisdom

Abstraction is a mental process we use when trying to discern what is essential or relevant to a problem; it does not require a belief in abstract entities. ↗

— Tom G. Palmer

#abstraction #belief #discern #does #entities

Abstraction is real, probably more real than nature. ↗

— Josef Albers

#more #nature #probably #real #than