Modern Art Quotes

“Modern paintings are like women, you'll never enjoy them if you try to understand them.”
― Freddie Mercury

“Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.”
― Tom Stoppard, Artist Descending a Staircase

“Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right-for wall paper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity and terror, which is not abstract at all but very human. What the self-styled modern artists are doing is a sort of unemotional pseudo-intellectual masturbation. . . whereas creative art is more like intercourse, in which the artist must seduce- render emotional-his audience, each time. These ladies who won't deign to do that- and perhaps can't- of course lost the public. If they hadn't lobbied for endless subsidies, they would have starved or been forced to go to work long ago. Because the ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for 'art' that leaves him unmoved- if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes or such."

"You know, Jubal, I've always wondered why i didn't give a hoot for paintings or statues- but I thought it was something missing in me, like color blindness."

"Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art, just as you must know French to read a story printed in French. But in general terms it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code like Pepys and his diary. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn. . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything- obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence. Ben, would you call me an artists?”

“Huh? Well, I’ve never thought about it. You write a pretty good stick.”

“Thank you. ‘Artist’ is a word I avoid for the same reasons I hate to be called ‘Doctor.’ But I am an artist, albeit a minor one. Admittedly most of my stuff is fit to read only once… and not even once for a busy person who already knows the little I have to say. But I am an honest artist, because what I write is consciously intended to reach the customer… reach him and affect him, if possible with pity and terror… or, if not, at least to divert the tedium of his hours with a chuckle or an odd idea. But I am never trying to hide it from him in a private language, nor am I seeking the praise of other writers for ‘technique’ or other balderdash. I want the praise of the cash customer, given in cash because I’ve reached him- or I don’t want anything. Support for the arts- merde! A government-supported artist is an incompetent whore! Damn it, you punched one of my buttons. Let me fill your glass and you tell me what is on your mind.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

“Modern art has to be what is called ‘intense.’ it is not easy to define being intense; but, roughly speaking, it means saying only one thing at a time, and saying it wrong.”
― G.K. Chesterton, Alarms and Discursions

“Stop thinking about art works as objects and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences. What makes a work of art good for you is not something that s already inside it but something that happens inside you.”
― Brian Eno

“They lived off each other's hypocrisy, fuelling a worthless market of trash.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“Since it is sure of its ability to control the entire domain of the visible and the audible via the laws governing commercial circulation and democratic communication, Empire no longer censures anything. All art, and all thought, is ruined when we accept this permission to consume, to communicate and to enjoy. We should become the pitiless censors of ourselves.”
― Alain Badiou

“Calcutta is like a work of modern art that neither makes sense nor has utility, but exists for some esoteric aesthetic reason.”
― Amit Chaudhuri, A Strange and Sublime Address

“The audience can endorse the triviality of modern art, but they can’t like it.”
― David Mamet, On Directing Film

“Art is an expression that transcends religion, culture, country, people and time.”
― Amit Ray, Peace Bliss Beauty and Truth: Living with Positivity

“I´ve often wondered why people who could look at incredible new art and laugh at it bothered to involve themselves with art at all. And yet you'd run into so many of these types around the art scene.”
― Andy Warhol, POPism: The Warhol Sixties

“A pair of stockings is no less suitable o make a painting of than wood,nails,turpentine,oil,and fabric.”
― Robert Rauschenberg

“El estancamiento y la falta de perspectivas del arte moderno corresponden al estancamiento y a la falta de perspectivas de la sociedad de la mercancía que ha agotado todos sus recursos.”
― Anselm Jappe, El absurdo mercado de los hombres sin cualidades: Ensayos sobre el fetichismo de la mercancía

“I think a lot of modern art is complete bullshit. But I admire the creativity. The weird shit people think of! Some of the most interesting things I've ever seen in my life, I've seen in modern art museums. And that's what art is all about. It's supposed to make you think.”
― Oliver Markus Malloy, Bad Choices Make Good Stories - Finding Happiness in Los Angeles

“Compact trash into a cube. Then slice it into thin layers and BOOM—you’ve got pieces of modern art. Each sliver belongs in a museum, doing what it’s designed to do—launder money.”
― Jarod Kintz, Powdered Saxophone Music

“The autonomy of art that emerged through Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Mondrian, and the Russian Constructivism had seen painting develop independent of imitations or decoration, and so the content of art became much closer to that of music.”
― Neville Weston, The Reach of Modern Art: A Concise History

“Realism without naturalism... is a leading motif in Modern Art. There is a move away from the struggle to perfect the reflection of Nature in Art's mirror, which I attribute to the all-pervading effects of photography...You must serve the tradition without being its slave. Remember you are an artist, not a draughtsman.”
― Tom Holt, Lucia Triumphant

“The Cubists are entitled to the serious attention of all who find enjoyment in the colored puzzle pictures of the Sunday newspapers. Of course there is no reason for choosing the cube as a symbol, except that it is probably less fitted than any other mathematical expression for any but the most formal decorative art. There is no reason why people should not call themselves Cubists, or Octagonists, or Parallelopipedonists, or Knights of the Isosceles Triangle, or Brothers of the Cosine, if they so desire; as expressing anything serious and permanent, one term is as fatuous as another.”
― Theodore Roosevelt, An Art Exhibition

“Traditional art extended itself to the whole of life and left an imprint of beauty upon the everyday existence of human beings rather than being concerned only with paintings that we put in museums and at best visit a few Sundays each year.”
― Seyyed Hossein Nasr, در جست‌وجوی امر قدسي

“Sanat, doğrudan bir kullanım değeri olmayan lüks maldır.”
― Christian Saehrendt &Steen T Kitti

“She walked past an abstract painting that oozed wealth, the grotesquely simply kind with the white line drawn on a black canvas, as though saying: we're so powerful we pay millions for the mundane.”
― Kelly Siskind, The Beat Match

“In your world of classical art pieces are revered for the artist's skill of execution - that is, how deftly he places the brush to canvas or the chisel to stone. In modern art, however, masterpieces are often more about the idea than the execution.”
― Dan Brown, Origin

“The real reason that students and increasingly teachers of art history are ready to jettison the past, however, is that the refusal of the authority of the past is the very program of modern art. To invest in modern art existentially is to agree to carry out that program. The investment in modern art entails contempt for the past. The inverse is true as well, although some would deny it. I would maintain that it is only possible to say something insightful about contemporary art from a standpoint well inside the magic circle. The rest of us on the outside, who do not live but only look at contemporary art, always misrecognize it.”
― Christopher S. Wood, A History of Art History

“Die Künste, die den Müll der Welt zu spiegeln vorgeben, vermehren ihn nur.”
― Botho Strauß, Lichter des Toren: Der Idiot und seine Zeit

“Dreams are the clay through which we mold our art.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Oneironaut’s Diary

“Modern art which, if you are unclear on that as a concept, is the art that tends to look like your kid could do it, but your kid couldn't do it and your kid didn't do it, so it's probably best if you let go of that cliché and just think about how it makes you feel.”
― Hannah Gadsby, Ten Steps to Nanette

“Just as a consummate cook will prepare a most delicate repast out of the most poor materials, so will the modern poet concoct us a most popular poem from the weakest emotions, and the most tiresome platitudes. The only difference is, that the cook would prefer good materials if he could get them, whilst the modern poet will take the bad from choice.”
― William Hurrell Mallock, Every Man His Own Poet Or, The Inspired Singer's Recipe Book

“But in my profession I know one miraculous name. You will be very much surprised. This name is Piet Mondrian. That man painted extremely simple panels, where on a seemingly white ground, divided by what seems to merely be black lines of different sizes and some rectangles of color. If you sit in front of that picture or in front of any of his pictures, but you cannot see it quick, you see it certain times. You have to conentrate and suddenly in front of your eyes, the background recedes, the airy, wonderful structure is advancing towards your eyes and you see the green going far and red coming nearer and the yellow going out of sight. And in front of your eyes is the structure. You are assisting at something that becomes in front of your eyes, that's veritably a becoming, you are assisting at the birth of a form. It is miraculous to recreate the form, but to make you see form being born in front of you -- it is a great miracle.
[-- Martin A. Ryerson Lecture, 20 February 1951]”
― Pavel Tchelitchew

“But in my profession I know one miraculous name. You will be very much surprised. This name is Piet Mondrian. That man painted extremely simple panels, where on a seemingly white ground, divided by what seems to merely be black lines of different sizes and some rectangles of color. If you sit in front of that picture or in front of any of his pictures, but you cannot see it quick, you see it certain times. You have to concentrate and suddenly in front of your eyes, the background recedes, the airy, wonderful structure is advancing towards your eyes and you see the green going far and red coming nearer and the yellow going out of sight. And in front of your eyes is the structure. You are assisting at something that becomes in front of your eyes, that's veritably a becoming, you are assisting at the birth of a form. It is miraculous to recreate the form, but to make you see form being born in front of you -- it is a great miracle.
[-- Martin A. Ryerson Lecture, 20 February 1951]”
― Pavel Tchelitchew

“Jackson Pollock and Hugh Hefner both rose to prominence in the 1950s, though Pollock’s appeal was that no one understood him, and Hefner’s appeal was that no one misunderstood him. When Modern men think of art, they tend to think of such highs and lows. In the midst of this daring game of extremes, art lost the common touch.”
― Joshua Gibbs, Love What Lasts: How to Save Your Soul from Mediocrity