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Modern Quotes

“I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted.”

“Abstract art is uniquely modern. It is a fundamentally romantic response to modern life - rebellious, individualistic, unconventional, sensitive, irritable.”

Art Modern Art Is Response Sensitive Abstract Rebellious Modern Life Unconventional Abstract Art Individualistic

Book:The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell

Source: The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell

“The new tinge to modern minds is a vehement and passionate interest in the relation of general principles to irreducible and stubborn facts. All the world over and at all times there have been practical men, absorbed in 'irreducible and stubborn facts'; all the world over and at all times there have been men of philosophic temperament, who have been absorbed in the weaving of general principles. It is this union of passionate interest in the detailed facts with equal devotion to abstract generalisation which forms the novelty of our present society.”

“Modern transcendental idealism, Emersonianism, for instance, also seems to let God evaporate into abstract Ideality. Not a deity in concreto, not a superhuman person, but the immanent divinity in things, the essentially spiritual structure of the universe, is the object of the transcendentalist cult. In that address of the graduating class at Divinity College in 1838 which made Emerson famous, the frank expression of this worship of mere abstract laws was what made the scandal of the performance.”

“The movement of abstract art... bears within itself at almost every point the mark of the changing material and psychological conditions surrounding modern culture.”

Art Culture Modern Conditions Movement Materials Bears Art Is Mark Psychological Abstract Modernism Abstract Art Modern Culture

Author:Meyer Schapiro

“The life of a thinking man will probably be divided into two parts -- the first in which he desires to exterminate modern thinkers, and the second in which he desires to watch them exterminating each other. ... Suppose, for instance, there is an old story and a new skeptic who is skeptical of the story. We have only to wait a little while for a yet newer skeptic who is skeptical of the skeptic. He will probably find the old notion actually a help in his new notion. This process is an abstract truth applying to anything, apart from agreement or disagreement.”

“I know a lot of choreographers prefer to do abstract dance and not be bothered with a story, but even when I'm asked to do classical ballet or a modern piece, I still want to tell a story.”

Knows Want Stills Stories Pieces Modern Abstract Ballet Bothered Choreographers

Author:Susan Stroman

“Modern abstract art starts in Russia in about 1915 with Malevich, and then the Russian Revolution happens, and eventually all that experimental art gets squashed and social realism comes back into play. All of a sudden, Malevich is no longer painting black squares; he's painting peasants in colorful schmattas.”

Art Play Happens Social Black Modern Painting Revolution Russia Abstract Squares Realism Peasants Colorful Abstract Art Russian Revolution

Author:Robert Longo

“There is more fine abstract design in Navajo rugs than in all these modern paintings.”

Modern Design Painting Fine Abstract

Author:Theodore Roosevelt