Quotes from Michael Kimmelman

Drawing used to be a civilized thing to do, like reading and writing. It was taught in elementary schools. It was democratic. It was a boon to happiness.

Under ordinary circumstances, bad art naturally gets sorted out and disappears. That is how history works when it is left alone to do its job.

Under ordinary circumstances, bad art naturally gets sorted out and disappears. That is how history works when it is left alone to do its job. The paradox of the culture wars is that they have made celebrities out of some artists who would otherwise vanish. Censorship has become a growth industry. This may be the best argument, in the end, for unfettered freedom of expression.

Art provides us with clues about how to live our lives more fully...about how creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make daily living a masterpiece.

Robert Rauschenberg, 1925-2008] helped to obscure the lines between painting and sculpture, painting and photography, photography and printmaking, sculpture and photography, sculpture and dance, sculpture and technology, technology and performance art — not to mention between art and life.

Children dawdle to look at what adults hurry past. They take time because they have time. They see the world through fresh eyes. Maybe this is why artists who push us to look more carefully at simple things may also strike a slightly melancholic note. They remind us of a childlike condition of wonderment that we abandoned once we became adults and that we need art to highlight occasionally, if only to recall for us what we have given up.

Their uselessness becomes their asset: they turn into totems and fragments of the lost worlds they came from.

Collecting is a way to bring order to the world, which is what museums, our public collectors, do.

Novelty in creative endeavors usually arises from routine -- you have to be familiar with something before you know what is novel.

All these wild things go on in the world,' says Pearlstein. 'What happens in the studio, I can control. I can do something constructive in the world. That's a lesson I learned in the army: in war, everything is destruction, so anything else we may do can be a gesture of opposition.

The ecstasy of creation is when, as an artist, you are one with and totally absorbed in the act. It is the same experience whether it is the act of painting, making music, or writing. The experience really obliterates all other considerations at that moment. The act of re-creating the visual experience o the models in front of me is absolutely absorbing, leaving no room for extraneous thoughts, sexual or otherwise. My routine is my way of controlling hysteria.

the conception of] art as potentially something other than an object made for a pedestal or a wall and passively contemplated. It might be a collective enterprise, a happening. Everyone, and anyone, might participate in making a work of art.

Art, not unlike raising children... may entail much sacrifice and periods of despair, but, with luck, the effort will produce something that outlives you.

The consolation of art comes in many forms... For some it is making, for others it is having.

Art provides us with clues about how to live our own lives more fully... art becomes our entree to the sublime.

Everything, even the most ordinary daily affair, is enriched by the lessons that can be gleaned from art.