which meant we crossed through most of the city. Well, we couldn’t really walk. He would continually stop to notice something surprising everywhere - on the side of a shack or in an open space. That walk was a revelation for me. It was the first time that someone else had given me a lesson in looking without prejudice, someone who didn’t compare what he was seeing with something before, who was sensitive to the finest nuances of light. Tobey would stop on the sidewalks, sidewalks which we normally didn’t notice when we were walking, and his gaze would immediately turn them into a work of art. He was attentive to the slightest detail. For him, everything was alive. He had an extraordinary sense of the presence of things. His work was unbelievably diverse. He is often compared to Picasso. He was our own, an American Picasso! Then, of course, there are a lot of his works which don’t interest me. But I believe I was fascinated by those I liked more than by any other paintings. Since then, perhaps I have never again quite had the same feeling. (Yes; at Basel, this year, in front of one of his works.- John Cage: footnote of 1972) The ones I prefer of them all are his White Writings. (And of these, I prefer those which contain no figurative element.- John Cage: footnote of 1972) These are white paintings from the Thirtees <but mainly the Fourtees, M.B.> which give the impression that each brushstroke bears a specific quality of white. In my opinion, they surpass Pollock’s canvases. Pollock’s colors seem to come out of buckets, and if you have five colors, that’s all you get. While with Tobey, you can’t count them all. Tobey is nature! (p. 158/159)


Naum Gabo, in: Mark Tobey. Between worlds. Opere 1935-1975, Museo d'Arte, Mendrisio/Museum Folkwang, Essen 1989

Mark Tobey’s art is unique among us so-called abstract artists. He resembles no one in his work.
Inasmuch as music is the highest and purest form of abstract art, Mark Tobey’s is nearer to music than anyone elses in the field of abstract art. A musical composition can be perceived and felt only by following the continuation of the basic motif and the guiding rhythm of change upon which the whole work is built. Similarly, the work of Mark Tobey can only be entirely felt and absorbed when one grasps the basic motif and follows the rhythm of change in the waves upon which the whole structure is based. When I look at any painting of his I always feel something cosmic in the structure of its everchanging phrases, which I would call visual counterpoint. At the same time, I feel the beating of the pulse of real life in the intensity with which he sustains in his work the changing chain of colors in his compositions.