Theo van Doesburg Quote

Art has poisoned our life. Aesthetics has infected everyone.... If one chooses a typewriter or a sewing machine in the living room, the housewife say: 'Please take it away; it destroys the harmony of the room'. Post-cards, stamps, pouches, railway-tickets, pots umbrellas, towels, pyamas, chairs, blankets, handkerchiefs and ties – everything is 'arty'. How much more refreshing are those articles which are not called art: bathrooms, bath-tubs, bicycles, automobiles, engine-rooms and flat-irons. There are still people who can make beautiful things without art. They are the progressives.

Van Doesburg in his article: 'The end of art'; in 'De Stijl' series XII, 1924-5, pp. 135-136