Piet Mondrian - Time Quotes

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Forgive me of saying so, but good things just have to grow very slowly. I say this in connection with your plans.... for launching a journal. I do not think that the time is favourable for it. More must be achieved in art in that direction. I hardly know anyone who is really creating art in our style, in other words, art which has arrived....(i. e. you will have to include in it [in the planned art-Journal 'De Stijl'] what is not consistent with our ideas.)

Piet Mondrian
They [Mondrian's friends in Paris, Tonia and Wim Stieltjes] are receptive to the new, although they do not know what it is. Thus I do occasionally feel that my effort has not been in vain. They find the idea of the N. B. [in Dutch: Nieuwe Beelding / Neo Plasticism] sound and quite magnificent, but think that it will be quite a long time before people are ready for it.

Piet Mondrian
A form must be of its own time if it is to be recognized: one cannot relate to what one is not or does not have – Thus all that is of the past is to be rejected.

Piet Mondrian
I believe that at times such as these my modest efforts may be useful to mankind. I have shown how the new art has succeeded in bringing about pure relationships, and furthermore how these can be created in day-today life.

Piet Mondrian
It is clear to me that this [his recent works and ideas on art] is art for the future. Futurism, although it has advanced beyond naturalism, occupies itself too much with human sensations. Cubism – which in its content is still too much concerned with earlier aesthetic products, and thus less rooted in its own time than Futurism – Cubism has taken a giant step in the direction of abstraction, and is in this respect of its own time and of the future. Thus in its content it is not modern, but in its effect it is.

Piet Mondrian
You must have heard that last autumn I almost got married, but I am glad I realized in time that it had been an illusion, all those beautiful things. Although I have always lived for art, I am also attracted to the beautiful in life and so I sometimes do things that seem strange for me.

Piet Mondrian
The new vision.... does not proceed from a fixed point. Its viewpoint is everywhere, and not limited to any one position [in space]. Nor is it bound by space or time (in accordance with the theory of relativity) [of Einstein]. In practice, the viewpoint is in front of the plane... Thus this new vision sees architecture as a multiplicity of planes; again flat. This multiplicity composes itself (in an abstract sense) into a flat image [where Van Doesburg emphasis the dynamic position of the viewer – a central idea of Futurism.

Piet Mondrian
Having red several of your books, I wonder if you [Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Anthroposophy] could find the time to read my brochure 'Le Néo-Plasticisme', which I am closing. I believe that Neo-Plasticism is the art of the foreseeable future for all true anthroposophists and theosophists. Neo-Plasticism creates harmony through the equivalence of the two extremes: the universal and the individual. The former by 'revelation', the latter by 'deduction'... It was impossible to bring about an equilibrium of relationships other than by destroying the 'form', and replacing it by a new 'universal' expressive means.

Piet Mondrian
[the double line in his paintings] is still one line, as in the case of your grooves [the wide sunken lines in the relief's, artist Gorin made that time]... In my last things the double line widens to form a plane, and yet it remains a line. Be that as it may, I believe that this question is one of those which lie beyond the realm of theory, and which are of such subtlety that they are rooted in the mystery of 'art'. But all that is not yet clear in my mind.

Piet Mondrian
Reality manifests itself as constant and objective - independent of us, but as changeable in space and time. Consequently, its reflection in us contains both properties. Mixed up in our mind, these properties are confused and we do not have a proper image of reality.

Piet Mondrian
Art is not made for anybody and is, at the same time, for everybody.

Piet Mondrian
In past times when one lived in contact with nature, abstraction was easy; it was done unconsciously. Now in our denaturalized age abstraction becomes an effort.

Piet Mondrian
The purer the artist's 'mirror' is, the more true reality reflects in it. Overseeing the historical culture of art, we must conclude that the mirror only slowly is purified. Time producing this purifying shows a gradual, more constant and objective image of reality.

Piet Mondrian