A Quote by Jacob Lawrence

The Human subject is the most important thing. My work is abstract in the sense of having been designed and composed, but it is not abstract in the sense of having no human content I want to communicate. I want the idea to strike right away.
The investigations which have seemingly been the most purely abstract have often formed the foundation of the most important changes or improvements in the conditions of human life.
What we grieve for is not the loss of a grand vision, but rather the loss of common things, events and gestures.... ordinariness is the most precious thing we struggle for, what the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto fought for. Not noble causes or abstract theories. But the right to go on living with a sense of purpose and a sense of self-worth--an ordinary life.
I want Pinterest to be human. The Internet's still so abstract... To me, boards are a very human way of looking at the world.
They are imbeciles who call my work abstract. That which they call abstract is the most realistic, because what is real is not the exterior but the idea, the essence of things.
Being happy is not all about love! Love is not everything. Work, friends, and achieving things... your finite thing in life can't be getting married and having children. Like, creating a life for myself that's my own, and my own road? That was always the most important thing for me. Right now, I have a kid and stuff, and it's fantastic to be a mother, but it's not the final thing. You want to stay an individual. You need to stay an individual for your kid, as an example of what a human being should be! You want to stay true to yourself and not become a half a person. That is so, so important.
With abstract work, I never was quite sure what it was that felt right about the painting, but I did know that I responded to it and I liked whatever it was offering me. That's something that seems to happen as well when I'm writing, where maybe things that don't necessarily make a lot of logical sense are put together, and yet we struggle to make sense of these things somehow. I'm not quite sure why that is; it's something about human nature, I guess.
Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract for he must create his own work from his visual impressions. A realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.
All paintings start out of a mood, out of a relationship with things or people, out of a complete visual impression. To call this expression abstract seems to me often to confuse the issue. Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract . . . a realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts.
I don't know why you'd want to say your work comes from nature, because art is related to perception, not nature. All abstract artists try to tell you that what they do comes from nature, and I'm always trying to tell you that what I do is completely abstract. We're both saying something we want to be true.
The abstract expressionists had that thing of, subject matter becomes content, content becomes form. And I always thought there was no room for style. I felt with my painting, the style really is the content. The style holds everything together.
What intrigues me most about the human voice, is its ability to make all things transparent through its power of transformation. The voice is not just a conduit for words. For me it is like an abstract dream in which everything makes perfect sense.
Nothing beats having a genuine compassion for human souls. If there is one thing I know, it's that people want to be acknowledged; they want to be heard; and above all, they want to be appreciated.
The abstract has no emotional content... the abstract is more powerful the more abstract it is.
The human condition is what it is. We can see beauty and wonder in the world, but we also face imminent death and uncertainty, and we often need to sidestep the idea of time and communicate with each other, not with words but with a sense of community and union. I don't want to make an overreaching statement, but I think that's the function of culture.
I think there's something about having a purpose in life and a sense of belonging that is more important than money for any human being.
My stories often begin with a situation or character rather than an insight about the human condition. It's always been difficult for me to write from an abstract idea, no matter how interesting or compelling I feel the idea might be.
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