Joni Mitchell Quotes

At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act-rather than as a space in which to reproduce, re-design, analyze or express an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event.

Modern art was born from a desire to destroy kitsch.

Abstract expressionism was the first American art that was filled with anger as well as beauty.

Andy Warhol defined Pop Art.

Conceptual art became the liberating idea that gave the art of the next 40 years its real impetus.

Yes, I did, I mean I painted er, in a kind of abstract expressionist way, because of course that was exciting.

Well, I'd say that the beginning of this thing came through with Art of This Century, Peggy Guggenheim's, where she opened this gallery and began showing some things that caused a little talk, amongst a lot of other things.

The New York action painters want their pictures to jump off the walls and chase you down the street.

As far as I can see, the history of experimental art in the twentieth century is intimately bound up with the experience of intoxification.

Well, I think there are artists who are more or less contemporary with Hopper who are more relevant.

The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on!

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

I'm really into California art from the '60s. I like a lot of Bay Area artists, like Nathan Oliveira and Bruce Conner.

The history of American art, in a way, begins with Jackson Pollock and his big paintings. This theme of bigness - all painters and sculptors have dealt with it ever since.

Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning).

In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.

In the United States there has been a kind of a structure in the Modern art world. The New York School was nearly a coherent thing-for a minute.

Mother's interest in contemporary American artists emerged during the 1920s.

Franz Kline, who became known for his black and white paintings, did a whole series of gorgeous landscapes and wonderful portraits that may still hang in Greenwich Village.

I want to do just, like, regular art. Whatever is made today on canvas goes up against all of art history. It's the most radical thing.

I'm not an abstract artist; I leave that to others. To me, abstract art ended with Kazimir Malevich's 'Black Square.' To continue it is senseless.

When you think about Dada and the great moments in Modern Art, it's always the sense of when you're not sure that art is most likely to be occurring.

Clem had made it known that Pollock was a great painter.

Those damned Abstract Expressionists. They were a major problem. Because the critics adored them to such an extent, reams and reams, pages and pages of articles about Abstract Expressionists, when we came along, we were just not taken seriously at all.

I don't think there is any question that Picasso is the greatest figure of the 20th century.