I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is. — Jean-Michel Basquiat
Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen. — George Jean Nathan
What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism. — Octavio Paz
Art is subject to arbitrary fashion. — Kary Mullis
The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic. — Oscar Wilde
A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier. — Gustave Flaubert
Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them. — Sol LeWitt
When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine. — Pablo Picasso
A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car. — Kenneth Tynan
Art cannot be criticized because every mistake is a new creation — Mr. Brainwash
Whatever an artist's personal feelings are, as soon as an artist fills a certain area on the canvas or circumscribes it, he becomes historical. He acts from or upon other artists. — Willem de Kooning
I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peephole that gives access to hidden treasure. — Djuna Barnes
I guess art is in the eye of the beholder. — Kehinde Wiley
The truly modern artist is aware of abstraction in an emotion of beauty. — Piet Mondrian
John Baldessari, the 79-year-old conceptualist, has spent more than four decades making laconic, ironic conceptual art-about-art, both good and bad. — Jerry Saltz
Short Art Critic Quotes
An artist should know art history. Shock value only lasts so long. — Robert Longo
A drama critic is a person who surprises the playwright by informing him what he meant. — Wilson Mizner
The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class. — Louis Dudek
Top 10 Art Critic Quotes
True karate is this: that in daily life one's mind and body be trained and developed in a spirit of humility, and that in critical times, one be devoted utterly to the cause of justice. — Gichin Funakoshi
For it is easy to criticize and break down the spirit of others, but to know yourself takes a lifetime. — Bruce Lee
Where the Old Masters created an illusion of space into which one could imagine walking, the illusion created by a Modernist is one into which one can look, can travel through, only with the eye. — Clement Greenberg
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic. — Simone Weil
More than in any other performing arts the lack of respect for acting seems to spring from the fact that every layman considers himself a valid critic. — Uta Hagen
The point of a liberal arts education is to learn how to think critically and independently, and to develop a sense of empathy for others. — Martha C. Nussbaum
I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is. — Ansel Adams
Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist. — Naguib Mahfouz
Once you learn to look at architecture not merely as an art more or less well or more or less badly done, but as a social manifestation, the critical eye becomes clairvoyant. — Louis Sullivan
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.
What Is A Critic Quotes
Be a free thinker and don't accept everything you hear as truth. Be critical and evaluate what you believe in. — Aristotle
A lot of people criticize Formula 1 as an unnecessary risk. But what would life be like if we only did what is necessary? — Niki Lauda
People can say whatever they want about you without knowing the facts. They can criticize you without even knowing you, and hate you when they don't even know you. All of a sudden, you're, like, the bin Laden of America. Osama bin Laden is the only one who knows exactly what I'm going through. — R. Kelly
Accept both compliments and criticism. It takes both sun and rain for a flower to grow.
Difficulties, opposition, criticism-these things are meant to be overcome, and there is a special joy in facing them and in coming out on top. It is only when there is nothing but praise that life loses its charm and I begin to wonder what I should do about it. — Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
I do think we know that a teacher who knows what he or she is doing, knows their subject matter, and knows how to impart knowledge to kids is a critical piece of closing the achievement gap. — Margaret Spellings
The most used program in computers and education is PowerPoint. What are you learning about the nature of the medium by knowing how do to a great PowerPoint presentation? Nothing. It certainly doesnt teach you how to think critically about living in a culture of simulation. — Sherry Turkle
Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyways.
Instead of trying to get work, focus on your network. People will play a huge part in directing your growth and investing in relationships is critical no matter what you want to do. — Jay Shetty
Even something as simple as a cavity is connected to your heart health, microbiome, and even brain health. Teeth are precious organs that are critical to the proper functioning of the whole body. What happens in the mouth, happens in the body. — Mark Burhenne
What you need is a challenge network. I think of a challenge network as the group of your most thoughtful critics who are able to hold up a mirror so that you can see your blind spots and then know what you need to rethink. — Adam Grant
When a critical mass of people have the Bible and apply what it teaches in their lives, a nation is transformed. — Loren Cunningham
Film Criticism Quotes
Inside me, 'Dragon Ball' became a thing of the past, but later, I got upset at the live-action film, revised the script for the anime film, and complained about the quality of the TV anime. — Akira Toriyama
The notion of directing a film is the invention of critics - the whole eloquence of cinema is achieved in the editing room. — Orson Welles
The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film. — Rainer W. Fassbinder
Animals are such agreeable friends - they ask no questions, they pass no criticisms.
The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That's my dream, to make such a German film. — Rainer Werner Fassbinder
My favorite laser disk ever was the laser disk for The Graduate, which had a commentary track that wasn't even the filmmakers, it was a professor, some film criticism guy who just happen to be this amazing commentator who went off into the whole theory of comedy. — Jay Roach
What critics call dirty in our pictures, they call lusty in foreign films. — Billy Wilder
What you feel about another person, what you think or say about another eprson, what you do to another person - you do to you. Give judgement and criticism and you give it to yourself. Give love and appreciation to another person or anything, and you give it to yourself.
Films are dreams. Many, many critics say to me that my films are not good because they are too unbelievable, but this is my style. I tell stories like they are dreams. This is my imagination. For me, it would be impossible to do a film that is so precise, that resembles real life. — Dario Argento
I am very critical! I hate watching myself but I know I have to because I'm going to be asked so I need to have some sort of semblance of what the films with me are like. But it's not an enjoyable experience watching yourself. I hate it less than I used to but I still don't enjoy it. — Daniel Radcliffe
It's hard to see a film one time and really "get it," and write fully and intelligently about it. That's a review. That's not film criticism. — Richard Linklater
I don't want to be a part of the demographics. I want to be an individual. I wear each of my films as a badge of pride. That's why I cherish all my bad reviews. If the critics start liking my movies, then I'm in deep trouble. — John Carpenter
Art History Quotes
After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture. — Jeffrey Deitch
Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves -- or desires. — Jacquetta Hawkes
How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions? — Polly Toynbee
I learned more from my mother than from all the art historians and curators who have informed me about technical aspects of art history and art appreciation over the years. — David Rockefeller
To me history ought to be a source of pleasure. It isn't just part of our civic responsibility. To me it's an enlargement of the experience of being alive, just the way literature or art or music is. — David McCullough
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world. — Dave Barry
Beauty is a form of genius -- is higher, indeed, than genius, as it needs no explanation. — Oscar Wilde
The study of History is the beginning of wisdom. — Jean Bodin
That's what hell must be like, small chat to the babbling of Lethe about the good old days when we wished we were dead. — Samuel Beckett
Contemporary Art Quotes
If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time? — Melvin Glover
My work seen in its totality is a statement about the integration of the contemporary artist into an industrial society. — Herbert Bayer
The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls. — Maya Deren
Graffiti writers will never stop. They'll just evolve. It's interesting what ideas people come up with and how it all extends forward. — Ben Eine
For me it's very important to turn Kiev into one of the main centers of contemporary art in the world. There is New York. There's London. And there will be Kiev. Everyone will come and say, 'Wow! — Victor Pinchuk
A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with. — Banksy
I especially like to collect contemporary art. — Yusaku Maezawa
I began collecting artwork as a way to help young artists to promote their work as well as to increase awareness of contemporary art among the younger generation. — Yusaku Maezawa
I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity. — Cindy Sherman
New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. — Sol LeWitt
Movie Critic Quotes
Critics are usually kinder to cheaper movies than to those they perceive to be big Hollywood releases. They cut you a lot more slack if you spend less money, which makes no sense. — Ethan Coen
I lost faith in the Oscars the first year I was a movie critic - the year that Bonnie and Clyde didn't win. — Roger Ebert
Over the years I've never written or made movies about political themes 'cause while they do have current critical importance, in the large, large scheme of things, only the big questions matter and the answers to those big questions are very, very depressing. — Woody Allen
Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it. — Andrew Stanton
Of course the French are making very credible movies and it is still one of the greatest nations in terms of world cinema but the real problem is the decay in film criticism. — Wim Wenders
In this age of consumerism film criticism all over the world - in America first but also in Europe - has become something that caters for the movie industry instead of being a counterbalance. — Wim Wenders
Many of the critics today get airline tickets, hotel accommodation, bags, beautiful photographs, gifts and other expenses paid by the distributors, and then are supposed to write serious articles about the movie. — Wim Wenders
One of the things I've been talking about with my critical writing and my own work is that these movies are seen differently in a theatrical space. It's very important to me. I edit films to be seen theatrically, like fiction material I've worked on like Listen Up Phillip or other documentaries. — Robert Greene
There are television critics, movie critics, and theater critics too who I like and who I follow and I get genuinely bummed when they don't like something that I've written because I usually agree with them. — Aaron Sorkin
Literary Criticism Quotes
How dare anyone, parent, schoolteacher, or merely literary critic, tell me not to act colored. — Arna Bontemps
Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion. — T. S. Eliot
Literary criticism can be no more than a reasoned account of the feeling produced upon the critic by the book he is criticising. — D. H. Lawrence
The nearest approach to the infallible in literary judgment is represented in the colossal work of the teacher of all these three [Edmund Gosse, Edward Dowden and George Saintsbury], the greatest critic that ever lived - not an Englishman, but a Frenchman, the wonderful Sainte-Beuve. — Charles Augustin Sainte-Beuve
The two main ideas that run through all of my writing, whether it be literary criticism or political polemic are these: I am strong in favor of liberty and I hate fraud. — H. L. Mencken
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. — George Orwell
Literary critics, however, frequently suffer from a curious belief that every author longs to extend the boundaries of literary art, wants to explore new dimensions of the human spirit, and if he doesn't, he should be ashamed of himself. — Robertson Davies
Literary criticism is generally bunk. Nonsense. Usually based on self-serving post-intellectual bullshit. — John Fante
Strict rules of evidence would destroy psychoanalysis and literary criticism. — Mason Cooley
The critical method which denies literary modernity would appear -- and even, in certain respects, would be -- the most modern of critical movements. — Paul De Man
Visual Art Quotes
The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design. — Massimo Vignelli
Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language. — Steven Pinker
I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary. — Barbara Kruger
The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age. — Marshall McLuhan
Our one goal is to give the world a taste of peace, friendship and understanding. Through the visual arts, the art of celebration of life. — Steven Spielberg
In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. — Walt Disney
I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality...to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not? — Storm Thorgerson
The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years. — Jerry Saltz
Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves. — Julia Morgan
I know the world is bruised and bleeding, and though it is important not to ignore its pain, it is also critical to refuse to succumb to its malevolence. Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge - even wisdom. Like art. — Toni Morrison
The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism. Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images. — Camille Paglia
Studio Ghosts: When you're in the studio painting, there are a lot of people in there with you - your teachers, friends, painters from history, critics... and one by one if you're really painting, they walk out. And if you're really painting YOU walk out. — Philip Guston
When people in a democracy are not educated in the art of living -- to strengthen their conscience, compassion, and ability to question and think critically -- they can be easily manipulated by fear and propaganda. A democracy is only as wise as its citizens, and a democracy of ignorant citizens can be as dangerous as a dictatorship. — Paul K. Chappell
I'm not saying Sonic Youth was a conceptual-art project for me, but in a way it was an extension of Warhol. Instead of making criticism about popular culture, as a lot of artists do, I worked within it to do something. — Kim Gordon
The main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda, that kitsch is more pliable to this end. — Clement Greenberg
Move not unless you see an advantage; use not your troops unless there is something to be gained; fight not unless the position is critical. — Sun Tzu
When, in 1913, in a desperate attempt to rid art of the ballast of objectivity, I took refuge in the form of the square... the critics... sighed, "All that we loved has been lost. We are in a desert"... But the desert is filled with the spirit of non-objective feeling. — Kazimir Malevich
Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking the boundaries and limits... In art, there is room for all possibilities. — Pablo Picasso
The word 'art' is very slippery. It really has no importance in relation to one's work. I work for the pleasure, for the pleasure of the work, and everything else is a matter for the critics. — Manuel Alvarez Bravo
PROMOTE A REVOLUTIONARY FLOOD AND TIDE IN ART. Promote living art, anti-art, promote NON ART REALITY to be fully grasped by all peoples, not only critics, dilettantes and professionals. — George Maciunas
In one dancing saloon I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.' — Oscar Wilde
If a man has the assurance within his own heart that he is worthy, and that he is laboring to the best of his ability to do good, he can stand up under the condemnation, the criticism and the censure of those by whom he is surrounded. — Heber J. Grant
The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion. — Walter Benjamin
We need to think about what cooking is, what context it takes place in and what its relationship to the world of art is. If there were criticisms of my presence at Documenta, that's a good thing because it means we were doing something new. Your mission in creating something artistic is to produce something new and polemical. — Ferran Adria
Self-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practice. — Joyce Carol Oates
An art critic is someone who appreciates art, except for any particular piece of art. — Robert Breault
The art of the novel, however, has fallen into such a state of stagnation - a lassitude acknowledged and discussed by the whole of critical opinion - that it is hard to imagine such an art can survive for long without some radical change. To many, the solution seems simple enough: such a change being impossible, the art of the novel is dying. — Alain Robbe-Grillet
I think a single sentence by Van Gogh is better than the whole work of all the art critics and art historians put together. — John Olsen
The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification. — Camille Anna Paglia
The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification. — Camille Paglia
It's not curators, it's not critics, it's not the public, it's not collectors who find great artists - it's other artists. — David Galenson
It cannot be too plainly stated that it is quite unimportant whether photography produces 'art' or not. Its own basic laws, not the opinions of art critics, will provide the only valid measure of its future worth. — Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Criticism will need an injection of humility that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally in a temporary capacity. Since the critic exists only for introducing and explaining, he must be readily intelligible; he has no special vocabulary: criticism is in no way a science or a system. — Jacques Barzun
All serious art, music, literature is a critical act. It is so, firstly, in the sense of Matthew Arnold's phrase: "a criticism of life." Be it realistic, fantastic, Utopian or satiric, the construct of the artist is a counter-statement to the world. — George Steiner
When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. — A. A. Milne
It is from the womb of art that criticism was born. — Charles Baudelaire
Jackie Gleason said that comedy is the most exacting form of dramatic art, because it has an instant critic: laughter. — Chuck Jones
He can be regarded as the great master of simplification. The art of resolving the tension at the critical moment and in the most effacious way so as to clarify the position as desired is Capablanca's own. — Max Euwe
One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture: It's like being the piano player in a whorehouse; you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs. — Robert Hughes
In Conclusion
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