For example, in painting the form arises from abstract elements of line and color, while in cinema the material concreteness of the image within the frame presents - as an element - the greatest difficulty in manipulation.
Sergei Eisenstein

For my own part, I abandon the ethics of duty to the Hegelian critique with no regrets; it would appear to me, indeed, to have been correctly characterized by Hegel as an abstract thought, as a thought of understanding.
Paul Ricoeur

Height, width, and depth are the three phenomena which I must transfer into one plane to form the abstract surface of the picture, and thus to protect myself from the infinity of space.
Max Beckmann

History is representational, while time is abstract; both of these artifices may be found in museums, where they span everybody's own vacancy.
Robert Smithson

How many people make themselves abstract to appear profound. The most useful part of abstract terms are the shadows they create to hide a vacuum.
Joseph Joubert

I am at war... with the principal personage of traditional philosophy, that abstract subject who masquerades as everyone and anyone, but is really a male subject in disguise.
Pam Gems

I am dominated by one thing, an irresistible, burning attraction towards the abstract.
Gustave Moreau

I am searching for abstract ways of expressing reality, abstract forms that will enlighten my own mystery.
Eric Cantona

I do not see scales as abstract.
James Galway

I felt the most intense pleasure in piercing the stone in order to make an abstract form and space; quite a different sensation from that of doing it for the purpose of realism.
Barbara Hepworth

I hardly need to abstract things, for each object is unreal enough already, so unreal that I can only make it real by means of painting.
Max Beckmann

I have always tried to write in a simple way, using down-to-earth and not abstract words.
Georges Simenon

I like the fact that music is more abstract.
Bryan Ferry

I never learned to verbalize an abstract musical concept. No thank you. The whole point of being a serious musician is to avoid verbalization whenever you can.
Virgil Thomson

I paint abstract expressions.
Billy Zane

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.
Jean-Paul Sartre

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism.
Don DeLillo

I think we're much smarter than we were. Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it.
Roy Lichtenstein

I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time.
Henry Flynt

I was worried in the '80s that the best abstract painting had become obsessed with materiality, and painterly gestures and materiality were up against the wall.
Frank Stella