Alfred Kazin Quotes

There have been countless changes in the long history of art. The most significant have been brought about by the genius of a single artist.

In art there is no progress, only fluctuations of intensity.

In the world of art, as in the whole of creation, freedom and progress are the main objectives.

There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love.

It seems to me that the arts are rather flourishing. There's an awful lot of bad art about because of this, but that's true of every great era. I'm sure there was a lot dreadful art in the Renaissance that we fortunately don't see today.

The creator of the new composition in the arts is an outlaw until he is a classic.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

Bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only "liked": it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive.

It's in our nature. If you are a plumber, there is an objective way to establish whether you put together a great piping system or not. Art is a bit more slippery than that. So, when you fill a gallery with dirt and someone comes along waving wads of bills, it's difficult not to take them because they become a tangible acknowledgement that what you've been doing actually makes sense.

Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

Less disappointing than life, great works of art do not begin by giving us all their best.

That art is best which suggests most.

The history of art is a sequence of successful transgressions.

Artists are free to push boundaries to make art. But when pushing boundaries is their only aim, the result is usually bad art.

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral. The size of the project means little in art, beyond the money matter. It is the quality of the character that really counts.

Art need no longer be an account of past sensations.

When you come up in the art world, whatevers in the air, the issues of the moment, end up becoming part of the working method or modus operandi of how you think about doing a painting. And I came up at a time when-actually painting was dead when I came up. Sculpture sort of ruled.

I don't want to compare myself to Picasso, but he had four or five periods in his life. Any good artist grows and changes and matures.

Art never improves, but... the material of art is never quite the same.

I like people that challenge their art, not only in the purist way, but also in terms of how they could provoke and make something different.

I'm a huge fan of David Hockney. I love the way he keeps reinventing himself.

In art there are only fast or slow developments. Essentially it is a matter of evolution, not revolution.

I have never collected an object or figure from Africa or Oceania because of anything curious about it or because of its utility or historic interest. Everything has been chosen entirely because of its aesthetic significance; its form, feeling, structure, and plastic values.