Guernica had become the icon of modern art’s moral goodness. ibid.
Mondrian is testing the idea that society can be perfected ... Mondrian’s balances and abstract shapes answer that desire for unity. ibid.
They’re called the Abstract Impressionists. There were a handful of figures including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, William de Kooning and Barnet Newman. They came up with a new approach to art. ibid.
The Abstract Expressionists: The main thing is they’re abstract. The next thing, is, What are they expressing? ibid.
Everything’s amplified, everything’s bigger, narrower, emptier, more urgent, more morally challenging. ibid.
Jackson Pollock: It’s a zen look, it’s not a thing, it’s a weightless, gravity-defying delicate dance. ibid.
Why a painting by Willem de Kooning looks like a De Kooning is because of the way it’s done: that fantastically battered impacted look is achieved by constantly working at it. ibid.
A Mark Rothko painting is all looming void. The edges fuzzy, incredibly rich vibration of colour. But it’s not just loveliness; there’s a sombre, dim, awful atmosphere of portentous happening. Like you’re being dragged back to something ancient, profound. ibid.
After the 1950s we’re uncertain about sincerity. There’s a change from belief in higher values, even if we’re uncertain how to express them, to accepting that we don’t really believe anything. ibid.
It’s us looking at our own disillusionment … The Abstract Expressionists were profoundly disillusioned with modern society. ibid.
The problem of consumerism and art going together is not a new idea. ibid.
Centuries of artists making images, and when you become aware of that you are connecting to something profound in yourself. You’re tapping into civilisation through your own feelings, your own sense of beauty and shape and order. ibid.
How do we respond to abstract art? Matthew Collings, The Rules of Abstraction, BBC 2014
Abstract art has been around for a hundred years now. ibid.
All of [Gustav] Klimt’s paintings are profoundly Theosophical. ibid.
Kandinsky is the Lord of Abstraction. ibid.
Rothko committed suicide ... The meaning of the paintings is different. ibid.
A new popular audience is obsessed by contemporary art. But I think they are being sold something that isn’t really there: an all-in package of spirituality, depth and profundity. I am afraid the official institutions of contemporary art are just lying about this stuff. Matthew Collings, The New Statesman 24th November 2003, ‘The Bottom Line’