Quotes About Art

Duveen was not selling merely low upkeep, social distinction, and watermarks; he was selling immortality.

I didn't want that fellow to get used to buying modern pictures,' he said. 'There are too many of them.' Duveen was never eager to sell anything painted after 1800, because the fertility of the nineteenth-century painters would have sadly upset the Duveen economy of scarcity.

Duveen instantly wrote his ten-thousand-pound purchase off as a total loss, but the pictures he acquired from the diplomat's friends returned him a profit many times as large as his investment.

As a novice in collecting,' he said with a modesty not unlike Bache's, 'I expected to have to pay the highest prices for masterpieces. What I did not expect, what I was to discover, was that I would also have to pay a large premium for the privilege of paying the highest prices!

You can get all the pictures you want at fifty thousand dollars apiece – that's easy. But to get pictures at a quarter of a million apiece – that wants doing!

In fact, on Duveen's last visit to H. E.'s California mansion, San Marino, just before H. E. died, the host didn't have enough cash on hand to pay for the freight-car load of merchandise in the guest's caravan. Duveen accepted instead some Los Angeles real estate, a commodity of which H. E. was then the largest owner.

This was the largest transaction ever consummated in the world of art. Duveen had easily outdone the Soviets. There were twenty-one items in the Soviet deal, forty-two in Duveen's. Mellon paid the Soviets seven million dollars; he paid Duveen twenty-one million.

Since Duveen was able to assemble a large part of the Mellon Collection – and a large part of so many others besides – in one lifetime, it can be argued that he was the greatest collector in history.

Two years after Duveen died, Kress bought all the pictures that had been hanging fire. Duveen went right on selling.

Early in life, Duveen – who became Lord Duveen of Millbank before he died in 1939, at the age of sixty-nine – noticed that Europe had plenty of art and America had plenty of money, and his entire astonishing career was the product of that simple observation.

Making his clients conscious that whereas he had unique access to great art, his outlets for it were multiple, he watched their doubts about the prices of the art evolving into more acute doubts about whether he would let them buy it.

çünkü sanat, yeryüzünde ve insanlar?n içinde olup bitenleri, çöplükle saray? ayn? hakikatten uzak ve güzelle?tirici örtüye bürüyen ay ????? gibi, tatl? bir yalan bulutunun arkas?ndan göstermeye mecburdu, sanat eserinden faydalanabilecek durumda olanlar, her ?eyden önce avunmak, oyalanmak istiyorlard?; sanatkar?n ekme?i de i?te bu tatl? rüya merakl?lar?na ba?l?yd?...

Küçük resim öyle gözümü yumup bakacak gibi fena de?ildi. Sen en fena resimde bile güzelsin Aliye. Sen her zaman herkesten güzelsin.

Çünkü sanat, yeryüzünde ve insanlar?n içinde olup bitenleri, çöplükle saray? ayn? hakikatten uzak ve güzelle?tirici örtüye bürüyen ay ????? gibi, tatl? bir yalan bulutunun arkas?ndan göstermeye mecburdu,..

Connected with the fall of Satan is his lameness. The devil is represented in art and in legion as limping on one foot; this was occasioned by his having broken his leg in his fall.

Sabrina Ward Harrison

During one of these arguments, Diego picked up one of his paintings of the Mexican desert and shouted, I don't want to go back to that! He had spent fifteen years in Paris and the life of an expatriate suited him. It was easier to be a passionate Mexican nationalist when he wasn't living there

Books, like buildings, like works of art, like songs and sometimes even like the languages of prayers, often tell stories about the complexities of tolerance and cultural identity, complexities that ideological purists deny, both as an immediate reality and as a future possibility.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

In our life there is a single color, as on an artist palette which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love.

Color is all. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration.

In the arts, as in life, everything is possible provided it is based on love.

All colors are the friends of their neighbors and the lovers of their opposites.

What a genius, that Picasso. It is a pity he doesn't paint.