The activity of the artist makes him less socially conditioned and more humans. It is then that he is disposed to revolution. Society stands against … - Mark Rothko

The progression of a painter's work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer. As examples of such obstacles, I give (among others) memory, history or geometry, which are swamps of generalization from which one might pull out parodies of ideas (which are ghosts) but never an idea in itself. To achieve this clarity is, inevitably, to be understood.

The romantics were prompted to seek exotic subjects and to travel to far off places. They failed to realize that, though the transcendental must involve the strange and unfamiliar, not everything strange or unfamiliar is transcendental. The unfriendliness of society to his activity is difficult for the artists to accept. Yet this very hostility can act as a lever for true liberation.. .Both the sense of community and of security depend on the familiar. Free of them, transcendental experiences become possible.

[O]ne must agree with Rilke when he says that with 'nothing can one touch a work of art so little as with critical words...'. It was Marcel Duchamps who was critical, when he drew a moustache on the Mona Lisa. And so was Mondrian when he dreamed of the dissolution of painting, sculpture, and architecture into a transcendent ensemble.