Modern Art Quotes - Page 2

• The painting has a life of its own

  Jackson Pollock

  Inspirational, Art, Intuition

  Jackson Pollock, Gagosian Gallery (1990). “Jackson Pollock: black enamel paintings, April-May 1990”

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• The two most potent post-war orthodoxies--socialist politics and modernist art--have at least one feature in common: they are bothforms of snobbery, the anti-bourgeois snobbery of people convinced of their right to dictate to the common man in the name of the common man.

  Roger Scruton

  Art, War, Men

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• New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.

  Jackson Pollock

  Airplane, Mean, Artist

  Elizabeth Frank, Jackson Pollock (1983). “Jackson Pollock”, Abbeville Pr

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• To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream.

  Giorgio de Chirico

  Dream, Art, Escaping

  "Letters of the great artists - from Ghiberti to Gainsborough" by Richard Friedenthal, Thames and Hudson, London, (p. 231), 1963.

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• Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within.

  Jackson Pollock

  Art, Different, Matter

  Elizabeth Frank, Jackson Pollock (1983). “Jackson Pollock”, Abbeville Pr

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• When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing.

  Jackson Pollock

  Artist, Painting, Expressionism

  Jackson Pollock (2003). “Jackson Pollock. Englische Ausgabe.”, Kehrer Verlag

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• The notion that the public accepts or rejects anything in modern art is merely romantic fiction. The game is completed and the trophies distributed long before the public knows what has happened.

  Tom Wolfe

  Art, Romantic Love, Games

  Tom Wolfe (2008). “The Painted Word”, p.24, Macmillan

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• What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

  Octavio Paz

  Art, Criticism, Age

  Octavio Paz (1973). “Alternating Current”, p.20, Arcade Publishing

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• I have lived among enough painters and around studios to have had all the theories - and how contradictory they are - rammed down my throat. A man has to have a gizzard like an ostrich to digest all the brass-tacks and wire nails of modern art theories.

  D. H. Lawrence

  Art, Men, Ostriches

  D. H. Lawrence, James T. Boulton (2004). “D. H. Lawrence: Late Essays and Articles”, p.228, Cambridge University Press

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• The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

  Golda Meir

  Art, Knowing, People

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• When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.

  Jackson Pollock

  Painting, No Fear, Making Changes

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

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• In sharp contrasts to traditional art, modern art does not hide the fact that it is something made and produced: on the contrary, it underscores the fact.

  Theodor Adorno

  Art, Doe, Facts

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• All art is bad, but modern art is the worst.

  Joyce Cary

  Art, Painting, Modern

  Joyce Cary (1985). “Triptych”, Penguin Classics

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• I have trouble with modern art. But in general, all art forms fascinate me - art is the way human beings express what we can't say in words.

  Andrea Bocelli

  Art, Way, Trouble

  "Portrait of the artist: Andrea Bocelli, tenor" by Laura Barnett, www.theguardian.com. November 22, 2010.

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• In our world, in which religious images are losing their meaning, in which our customs are getting more and more secular, we are losing our sense of the eternal. I think it's a loss that has done a great deal of damage to modern art. Painting is a return to origins.

  Antoni Tapies

  Religious, Art, Loss

  "Antoni Tàpies, Spanish Abstract Painter, Dies at 88" by William Grimes, www.nytimes.com. February 6, 2012.

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• Savages and modern artists are alike strangely driven to create something uglier than themselves. but the artists find it harder.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Art, Savages, Literature

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• There are artists with palettes and easels selling the kind of modern art that Soviet art critics used to critique with bulldozers. Judging by the paintings I saw, the Soviets were right the first time.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Funny, Art, Humorous

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• To the engineer, all matter in the universe can be placed into one of two categories: (1) things that need to be fixed, and (2) things that will need to be fixed after you've had a few minutes to play with them. 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

  Art, Play, Skills

  Artist Descending a Staircase (1972)

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• It is the common defect of modern art study. Too many students do not know why they draw.

  Robert Henri

  Art, Drawing, Students

  "The art spirit".

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• My opinion is that new needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements.

  Jackson Pollock

  Mean, Artist, Technique

  Elizabeth Frank, Jackson Pollock (1983). “Jackson Pollock”, Abbeville Pr

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• The deflation, or flattening out, of values in Modern art does not necessarily indicate an ethical nihilism. Quite the contrary; in opening our eyes to the rejected elements of existence, art may lead us to a more complete and less artificial celebration of the world.

  Unknown

  Art, Eye, Nihilism

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• While majority opinion may not take kindly to forms of modern art, that same majority has also been hostile to most original and radical innovations, such as automobiles or airplanes or transatlantic cables or Protestantism or the theory that the earth is round and not flat.

  Alfred H. Barr, Jr.

  Art, Airplane, Innovation

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• Do not strive to be a modern artist: it's the one thing, unfortunately, you can't help being.

  Salvador Dali

  Artist, Helping, Modern

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• Modern art must strike out from the old. The new is not revealed to those whose eyes are fastened in worship upon the old…Have you ever seen an inch worm crawl up a leaf or twig, and then clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something to reach? That's like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have a footing.

  Albert Pinkham Ryder

  Art, Eye, Air

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• I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted.

  Jean Cocteau

  Girl, Mother, Teacher

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