Piet Mondrian Quotes

Let us note that art – even on an abstract level – has never been confined to ‘idea’; art has always been the ‘realized’ expression of equilibrium.

True Boogie-Woogie I conceive as homogeneous in intention with mine in painting: destruction of melody, which is the equivalent of destruction of natural appearance, and construction through the continuous opposition of pure means – dynamic rhythm.

Experience was my only teacher; I knew little of the modern art movement. When I first saw the works of the Impressionists, van Gogh, van Dongen, and Fauves, I admired it. But I had to seek the true way alone.

I came to the destruction of volume by the use of the plane. This I accomplished by means of lines cutting the planes. But still, the plane remained too intact. So I came to making only lines and brought the colour within the lines. Now the only problem was to destroy these lines also through mutual oppositions.

If the paying public demands naturalistic art, then an artist can use his skills to produce such pictures – but these are to be clearly distinguished from the artist’s own art.

The artist sees the tragic to such a degree that he is compelled to express the non-tragic.

The natural does not have to be a specific representation. I am now working on a thing which is a reconstruction of a starry sky, yet I make it, nevertheless, without a given in nature.

I do not know how I shall develop, but for the present, I am continuing to work within ordinary, generally known terrain, different only because of a deep substratum, which leads those who are receptive to sense the finer regions.

The spiritual (i.e. the supersensory) has many degrees; thus, the term ‘spiritual’ is used both for the scale of degrees away from the physical towards the spirit, but also only for the spiritual proper.

Non-figurative art is created by establishing a dynamic rhythm of determinate mutual relations which excludes the formation of any particular form.

It has become progressively clearer that the plastic expression of true reality is attained through dynamic movement in equilibrium. Plastic art affirms that equilibrium can only be established through the balance of unequal but equivalent oppositions.

By turning from the surface, one comes closer to the inner laws of matter, which are also the laws of the Spirit.

The meaning of words has become so blurred by past usage that ‘abstract’ is identified with ‘vague’ and ‘unreal,’ and ‘inwardness’ with a sort of traditional beatitude… The conception of the word ‘plastic’ has also been limited by individual interpretations.

I am only satisfied insofar as I feel ‘Broadway Boogie Woogie’ is a definite progress, but even about this picture I am not quite satisfied. There is still too much of the old in it.

Intuition enlightens and so links up with pure thought. They together become an intelligence which is not simply of the brain, which does not calculate, but feels and thinks.

To move the picture into our surroundings and give it real existence has been my ideal since I came to abstract painting.

We need words to name and designate things. But we have only a static language with which to express ourselves.

Art is the path to being spiritual.

Many appreciate in my former work just what I did not want to express, but which was produced by an incapacity to express what I wanted to express – dynamic movement in equilibrium. But a continuous struggle for this statement brought me nearer. This is what I am attempting in ‘Victory Boogie Woogie.’

Dance, theatre, etc. as art, will disappear along with the dominating ‘expression’ of tragedy and harmony: the movement of life itself will become harmonious.

We must look not to the negative (the misery, the bestial in life), although we undergo it and sympathize with it, but rather to the burgeoning life around us, which is strengthened by the negative.

Subjectivity ceases to exist only when the mutation-like leap is made from subjectivity to objectivity, from individual existence to universal existence.

It is not important to make many pictures but that I have one picture right.

Reality only appears to us tragical because of the disequilibrium and confusion of its appearances.

The positive and negative states of being bring about action. They cause the loss of balance and of happiness. They cause the eternal revolutions – the changes that follow one upon the other. They explain why happiness cannot be achieved in time.

The position of the artist if humble. He is essentially a channel.

Through the very culture of representation through form, we have come to see that the abstract – like the mathematical – is actually expressed in and through all things, although not determinately.

All individual thought is dissolved in universal thought, as all form is dissolved in the universal plastic means of Abstract-Real painting.

Only conscious man can mirror the universal: he can consciously become one with the universal and so can consciously transcend the individual.

I want to abolish time, especially in the contemplation of architecture.

I think that the destructive element is too much neglected in art.

Everything is expressed through relationship. Colour can exist only through other colours, dimension through other dimensions, position through other positions that oppose them. That is why I regard relationship as the principal thing.

The desire for freedom and equilibrium (harmony) is inherent in man (due to the universal in him).

Just as pure abstract art is not dogmatic, neither is it decorative.

The rhythm of relations of color and size makes the absolute appear in the relativity of time and space.

The subjectivization of the universal in art brings the universal downward on one hand, while on the other it helps raise the individual toward the universal.

I began as a naturalistic painter. Very quickly I felt the urgent need for a more concise form of expression and an economy of means. I never stopped progressing toward abstraction.

All that is base in the masses is temporary, no doubt serving only to prevent evolution (that of the elite, as well) from proceeding too quickly and thus not becoming ‘reality.’

The most advanced minds as well as the least advanced are obliged to use the same words. If we adopt new words, it will be even more difficult – if not impossible – to make ourselves understood. The new man must therefore express himself in conventional language.

Things are beautiful or ugly only in time and space. The new man’s vision being liberated from these two factors, all is unified in one unique beauty.