Quotes About Art

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Naturalism was never the point.

In paintings or illustrations, text (words) and images (resemblances) often appear together, but one is always subordinate to the other.

If women have failed to make "universal" art because we're trapped within the "personal," why not universalize the "personal" and make it the subject of our art?

As an artist she finds Dick's work hopelessly naive, yet she is a lover of certain kinds of bad art, art which offers a transparency into the hopes and desires of the person who made it. Bad art makes the viewer much more active. (Years later Chris would realise that her fondness for bad art is exactly like Jane Eyre's attraction to Rochester, a mean horse-faced junkie: bad characters invite invention.

We suicide ourselves for our own survival. Is there any hope of dipping back into the past and circling round it like you can in art?

Jerome doesn't have a clue. He in fact avoids the poets, with their petty feuds and righteous poverty. Endlessly competitive and introspective, they live in dumpy slum apartments and would knife each other for $5. Jerome prefers the painters and the film-makers who live in Soho and Tribeca. There's money there, at least the things they fight about are real.

If art's a seismographic project, when that project meets with failure, failure must become the subject too.

As an artist she finds Dick's work hopelessly naive, yet she is a lover of certain kinds of bad art, art which offers a transparency into the hopes and desires of the person who made it. Bad art makes the viewer much more active.

I have long since resolved to be a Jew ... I regard that as more important than my art," R.B. Kitaj and Arnold Schoenberg declared. Hannah Wilke said: "Feminism in a larger sense is intrinsically more important to me than art." No one over called these men bad Jews.

I have long since resolved to be a Jew ... I regard that as more important than my art," R.B. Kitaj and Arnold Schoenberg declared. Hannah Wilke said: "Feminism in a larger sense is intrinsically more important to me than art." No one ever called these men bad Jews.

The message is, IT'S GETTING LATE. Be glad you're in a California art school but don't forget you live by compromise and contradiction cause those who don't just die like dogs.

We have a piano in this house that exists solely for the purpose of supporting her photograph.

That's the beauty of the text, I find. You can key in things you would never say, and it hardly hurts a bit.

if I can't tell the difference between a random painting and a masterpiece, maybe the random painting is a masterpiece waiting to be recognized.

in all of human history, three things never went out of style. Graffiti, keep-out signs, and statues of ourselves.

If there's something to steal, I steal it! — PICASSO

When I was a child, my artist mom told me that there was no such thing as bad art. I know now that this was a complete lie. Yet it was a lie I needed to hear. It informed me that the goal of art was the creative process of discovery, experimentation, and fun. To this day, I cling to this lie as truth—especially when my pictures don't turn out right.

For me, fragrances are very - one of these beautiful art forms that bring about a whole host of things. It's what you want to smell like, it's memories that make you smile or are resonant of times in your life, it can remind you of music. If you're a lover of scent, it's a very kind of particular and evocative thing.

I always try to treat the book itself as the artwork. I don't want you to stop while you're reading one of my books and say, 'Oh! What a gorgeous illustration!' I want you to stop at the end of the book and say, 'This is a good book.

Comedy is the blues for people who can't sing.

Ragtime has about the same amount of respect as comics. And in a way they're similar art forms. Ragtime is highly compositional, and the emotion in the music is built in, whereas in jazz a lot of that emotion comes from the way it's performed.

Well, there are better cartoonists now than there ever have been. I firmly believe that. There's some amazing work being done.

There is absolutely no single aspect of one's personality that is more important to develop than empathy, which is not a skill at which men typically are asked to excel. I believe empathy is not only the core of art, literature and music, but should also be at the core of society, from ethics to economics.