Art History Quotes

• I always enjoyed art history because, growing up in California, my exposure was limited, and it was a new experience. To learn the history of art opened up certain things to me, made me see. It intrigued me.

  Herb Ritts

  Art, Growing Up, California

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• Art history is less explosive than the rest of history, so it sinks faster into the pulverized regions of time.

  Robert Smithson

  Art, Faster, Explosives

  Robert Smithson, Jack D. Flam (1996). “Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings”, p.41, Univ of California Press

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• 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

  Family, Mother, Appreciation

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• I have always said to young artists that scholastic training and the studying of art history are crucial to fully developing as an artist.

  LeRoy Neiman

  Art, Training, Study

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• I taught a lot of art history, especially Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. But the painting classes came back. The nudes came back. Not so much the still lifes. So now our department is the worst department, partly because it has the worst facilities.

  Ad Reinhardt

  Art, Class, Chinese

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• PICARD: There is no greater challenge than the study of philosophy. WESLEY: But William James won't be in my Starfleet exams. PICARD: The important things never will be. Anyone can be trained in the mechanics of piloting a starship. WESLEY: But Starfleet Academy PICARD: It takes more. Open your mind to the past. Art, history, philosophy. And all this may mean something.

  Gene Roddenberry

  Art, Philosophy, Mean

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• For me, art history is like a feather bed - you fall into it and it catches you.

  David Salle

  Art, Fall, Bed

  Interview with David Salle, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 9, 2013.

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• What's important about the artists we learn about in art history and see in all the art books is that they have somehow pushed the boundaries of what people think art is or should be, and that's how they've made their work relevant. That's what I'm trying to figure out for myself.

  Kadir Nelson

  Art, Book, Thinking

  "In-depth Written Interview". TeachingBooks Interview, www.teachingbooks.net. September 7, 2010.

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• Every age has the Stonehenge it deserves -- or desires.

  Jacquetta Hawkes

  Age, Desire, Stonehenge

  "God in the Machine". "Antiquity", Volume 41, Issue 163, p. 174, September 1967.

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• People say graphic design is so different now, because you have so many more pixels and colors to work with... But when you study art history, you see there's just nothing new under the sun. Mosaics and needlework, it's all analogous to pixel and bitmap art. And with it all, good design's not about what medium you're working in, it's about thinking hard about what you want to do and what you have to work with before you start.

  Susan Kare

  Art, Thinking, People

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• Megacollectors suppose they can enter art history by spending astronomical amounts.

  Jerry Saltz

  Art, Spending, Amount

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• Reps once took chances on art, History's most treasured musicians were believed in and cultivated to reach their potential. Today, it would be difficult for those musicians to get deals.

  Steve Vai

  Art, Musician, Would Be

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Quite apart from any conscious program, the great cultural historians have always been historical morphologists: seekers after theforms of life, thought, custom, knowledge, art.

  Johan Huizinga

  Art, History, Historical

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• History must always be taken with a grain of salt. It is, after all, not a science but an art.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Art, Taken, History

  Phyllis McGinley, Gerald Durrell (1969). “Birds, beasts, and relatives”, Viking Adult

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• There are so many people who have a training in art history; and if you've spent time looking at old art, you become attuned to what art does through materiality and so you begin to look to that in contemporary art as well. And anyway, I do think that matching one's experience with what you're looking at and questioning what you're looking inevitably involves materiality, just like it involves the sense of place.

  Laura Belem

  Art, Thinking, People

  Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

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• What kinds of problems, and what kinds of meanings, happen in the paint? Or as one historian puts it, 'What is thinking in painting, as opposed to thinking about painting?' These are important questions, and they are very hard to answer using the language of art history.

  James Elkins

  Art, Thinking, Important

  James Elkins (2004). “What Painting Is”, p.3, Routledge

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• I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. Hes very original, very accurate and acute.

  Helen Vendler

  Art, Criticism, My Favorite

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• Attempts to juggle domestic responsibilities with artistic production have often resulted in smaller bodies of work, and often works smaller in scale, than those produced by male contemporaries. Yet art history continues to privilege prodigious output and monumental scale or conception over the selective and the intimate.

  Whitney Chadwick

  Art, Responsibility, Privilege

  Whitney Chadwick (2007). “Women, Art, and Society”

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• Drawing from art history and mythology allows me to connect with viewers in a familiar, yet loose visual framework. Blending disparate histories and themes can give the overall presentation a recognizable, yet unique flavor.

  John Dyer Baizley

  Art, Unique, Drawing

  "BARONESS' John Dyer Baizley Interview About His Artwork Process". Interview with Michael Weigman, www.metalinjection.net. July 10, 2014.

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• I come from an art history background. I studied at a master's degree level; I chose to dork out on art for much of my adult life. A lot of my heroes are artists and a lot of my musical heroes have an artistic side.

  Black Francis

  Art, Hero, Musical

  Source: www.fuse.tv

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• Leonardo is the Hamlet of art history whom each of us must recreate for himself.

  Kenneth Clark

  Art, Leonardo

  Kenneth Clark (1988). “Leonardo da Vinci”, Viking Pr

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• I love the art history ones because it's so little work for me. There's so many paintings that when I look at them, the look on the lady's face is like so clear and her body language and her posture or their physical situation is so immediately recognizable. Anyone who's been in a conversation they didn't want to have, or been getting harangued by a little kid they didn't want to pay attention to or been tired and wanted to go to bed is just like, "Yes, of course."

  Mallory Ortberg

  Art, Kids, Tired

  Source: www.motherjones.com

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• I do preach the idea of individualism as in not adapting any kind of style or model other than that one of your own. I always found it strange in art history when studying about the different guilds and movements. It sounded too contrived and having to follow devised parameters to create art. I personally am not a team player in that manner. The art should be labeled by the artist's name only.

  Adamo Macri

  Art, Team, Player

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• Contemporary art is based on that an artist is supposed to go into art history in the same way as an art historian. When the artist produces something he or she relates to it with the eye of an art historian/critic. I have the feeling that when I am working it is more like working with soap opera or glamour. It is emotional and not art criticism or history of art.

  Odd Nerdrum

  Art, Eye, Emotional

  Source: sturm-lie.be

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• Think about it: you've already related it down to something that somebody else can understand. If art relates to something - it's like Picasso, it's like Mondrian - it's not. Art's supposed to be what it is. Using a reference of art history might help for some kind of sales, but it doesn't really help anybody. Art is what it is; it cannot be footnoted, until it enters the world. Then it has a history. Then the footnotes are the history, not the explanation.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Thinking, World

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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