![The violent quarrel between the abstractionists [like Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, both English sculptors] and the surrealists seems to me quite unnecessary. All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements – order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious. Both sides of the artist's personality must play their part. And I think the first inception of a painting or a sculpture may begin from either end. (Henry Moore)](https://cdn.quotesdtb.com/img/quotes_images_webp/65/henry-moore-abstract-art-303065.webp)
The violent quarrel between the abstractionists [like Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, both English sculptors] and the surrealists seems to me quite unnecessary. All good art has contained both abstract and surrealist elements, just as it has contained both classical and romantic elements – order and surprise, intellect and imagination, conscious and unconscious. Both sides of the artist's personality must play their part. And I think the first inception of a painting or a sculpture may begin from either end.
Henry MooreRelated topics
abstract art barbara begin ben classical conscious end english good imagination inception intellect order painting personality play quarrel quite romantic sculpture surprise think unconscious violent surrealist elements hepworthRelated quotes
There is something ridiculous and miserly in the myth we inherit from abstract art: That painting is autonomous, pure and for itself, and therefore we habitually analyze its ingredients and define its limits. But painting is 'impure'. It is the adjustment of 'impurities', which forces painting's continuity. We are image-makers and image-ridden. There are no 'wiggly or straight lines' or any other elements. You work until you vanish. The picture isn't finished if they are seen.
Phillip Guston
Everything intellectual and transcendent is joined together in painting by the uninterrupted labour of the eyes. Each shade of a flower, a face, a tree, a fruit, a sea, a mountain, is noted eagerly by the intensity of the senses to which is added, in a way of which we are not conscious, the work of the mind, and in the end the strength or weakness of the soul... It is the strength of soul which forces the mind to constant exercise to widen its conception of space. Something of this is perhaps contained in my pictures.
Max Beckmann
Cubism is no different from any other school of painting. The same principles and the same elements are common to all. The fact that for a long time cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it, means nothing. I do not read English, and an English book is a blank to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist, and why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?
Pablo Picasso
[learning European modern art by seeing it in the art-magazine 'w:Cahiers d'art'].. ..my heritage was all those things; [De Stijl, Constructivism, Cubism, Surrealism ] simultaneously, so I am all those things. I hope with a very strong intellectual regard for Cubism, and an admiration for it, because it was great at a particular time. It was both painting and sculpture. It was a great point of liberation in both painting and sculpture, and especially sculpture. [David Smith was one of the few sculptors in the art scene of American Abstract Expressionism ].
David Smith
I am biased towards the belief that every painter must be grounded in strong and faultless drawing skills, and until one has not experimented with all styles of painting and has not comprehended their potentialities one's work is not complete. Even an abstract painter must know how to draw as well as a figurative artist. As for me, drawing has never created any problem, since I know how to draw anatomy correctly if I had to, I understand the function of muscle groups and sculpture.
Guity Novin
