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Mark Tobey Quotes

1890–1976 United States

Mark George Tobey (December 11, 1890 – April 24, 1976) was one of the earliest American abstract expressionist painters, widely recognized and noted among the "mystical painters of the Northwest."

United States
Painters

Random Mark Tobey quote

14 quotes

Every artist's problem today is: What will we do with the human?

White lines in movement symbolize a unifying idea which flows through the compartmented units of life bringing the consciousness of a larger relativity.

At a time when experimentation expresses itself in all forms of life, search becomes the only valid expression of the spirit.

An artist must find his expression closely linked to his individual experience or else follow in the old grooves resulting in lifeless forms.

We have tried to fit man into abstraction, but he does not fit.

We look at the mountain to see the painting, then we look at the painting to see the mountain.

Reality must be expressed by a physical symbol.

I have sought a unified world in my work and use a movable vortex to achieve it.

We all feel a separateness; we wish that a drop of water would soften our ego; the world needs a common conscience: agreement.. ..we must concentrate outside ourselves.

There has been 32 isms since the advent of Cubism, yet after all there are essentially the same two old strings, the Romantic and the Classical. We've just be confused by the storm. Science and psychology have played a great part to say nothing of sex.

I have many ideas for lights. I will paint only lights at night. [on the twinkling city-lights]

I am accused often of too much experimentation.. ..but what else should I do when all other factors of man are in the same condition. I thrust forward into space as science and the rest do.

It is Fall. The leaves are being raked under the great elms darkening in the evening light. Slowly they become weighted with darkness. Across the river they are burning the grass on the Minnesota bluffs. Myriads of colored streamers reflect in the river blow..

Now it seems to me that we are in a universalising period.. .If we are to have world peace, we should have an understanding of all the idioms of beauty because the members of humanity who have created these idioms of beauty are going to be a part of us. And I would say that we are in a period when we are discovering and becoming acquainted with these idioms for the first time.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Mark Tobey (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.