Art Quotes

“Does art have a future? Performance genres like opera, theater, music and dance are thriving all over the world, but the visual arts have been in slow decline for nearly 40 years. No major figure of profound influence has emerged in painting or sculpture since the waning of Pop Art and the birth of Minimalism in the early 1970s.”

-- Camille Paglia

“Magic becomes art when it has nothing to hide.”

-- Ben Okri

“Many say an art dealer running a museum is a 'conflict of interest.' But maybe the art world has lived an artificial or unintentional lie all of these years when it comes to conflicts of interest.”

-- Jerry Saltz

“Summer is a great time to visit art museums, which offer the refreshing rinse of swimming pools - only instead of cool water, you immerse yourself in art.”

-- Jerry Saltz

“Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.”

-- Henri Matisse

“I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.”

-- Jackson Pollock

“Life is painting a picture, not doing a sum.”

-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

“Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise.”

-- Christian Bale

“Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.”

-- Pablo Picasso

“Dying is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I've a call.”

-- Sylvia Plath