'We love progress, but not yours'

"AGAINST . . .
10. - Pioneers suffering from arrested development, from success or from despair, pioneers sitting snug on their tight little islands, or vegetating in their oases refusing to resume the march, the pioneers who say: 'We love progress, but not yours'"
F. T. Marinetti, C. R. W. Nevinson, Vital English Art, Lacerba, II, 14, July 1914

Paul Klee - Fire In The Evening - 1929
via Charnel House

Anni Albers - Wall Hanging - 1926

Josef Mueller Brockmann - Juni Festwochen poster - 1959

“Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope--but not for us.”

Franz Kafka, statement to Max Brod, in in Franz Kafka: A Biography.

All the Way to Heaven

"...The empty form goes all the way to heaven."

Agnes Martin, The Untroubled Mind, 1972

Koloman Moser - Vignetten - Ver Sacrum - 1900s

Julius Klinger - Tabu poster - 1919

Paul Jacoulet - Calligraphy - 1940s

Inferior Universe

“Here an inferior universe, gridded, compartimented, geometrical, 
offered itself to the gaze of the heavenly wanderer.”
Paul Morand, Fleche d'Orient, 1932

Fedele Azari - Volo Liberato (Prospettive in volo) - 1926
via Kafka's Appartment

Josef Albers - Transparence and Space-illusion - in Interaction of Color - 1963

Donald Judd - Untitled - 1989

Replace the Judgement

"the development of a science ... involves the establishment of many rules, laws and formulae which replace the judgement of the individual workman ... the workman is told minutely what he is to do and how he is to do it; any improvement which he makes upon the orders given to him is fatal to success."
Frederick Taylor
quoted by J.F. O'Neill

Pablo Picasso - Colombe de la Paix - 1949

Augustin Tschinkel - The Dove of Peace - 1932

via Vision

Hans Schmitz - Die Masse - 1923

via Anastasia Simoniello

Demiurgos

“To Hegel, the process of thinking, which, under the name of ‘the Idea’, he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos (the creator, the maker) of the real world.... With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.” 

Karl Marx,
quoted here

Lyonel Feininger - Cathedral of Socialism - 1919

Cristopher Dresser - Plate XIX - ca. 1876
From his Studies in Design

Pablo Picasso - The guitarist - 1910

That Idea above the Soul

“An invisible current causes modem philosophy to place the Soul above the Idea. 

It thus tends, like modern science, and even more so than modern science, 

to advance in an opposite direction to ancient thought.” 

Henri Bergson, Introduction to Metaphysics, 1903

Gustav Klutsis - The Dynamic City ( Dinamicheskii gorod ) - 1919

Dan Gaymers - Polythene Underground - 2011

Adolph Gottlieb - The Red - 1972

Aleksei Kruchenykh - His one concern was for the idea

"...he misjoined his words; he cared nothing about spelling; his one concern was for the idea: in these habits, to our general surprise, he remained unchanged to the very end."

Porphyry, On the Life of Plotinus and the Arrangement of his Work, translated by Stephen MacKenna

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Chetyre Foneticheskikh Romana - 1927

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Universal War - 1916

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Valia Zdanevich - 1923

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Zamaul'II - 1919

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Zaum' - 1921

Aleksei Kruchenykh - Zaumniki - 1921

Karel Teige - Dancing About Architecture

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture” 

Frank Zappa

(Or was it Elvis Costello?)

Karel Teige - Untitled - 1947

Karel Teige - collage #25 - 1936

Karel Teige and Jaroslav Rössler - Les Mamelles De Tyresias - 1926