Betty Dodson Quotes

The artists are now big brands.

I'm very hard on the art world just being a big business.

As soon as any art is pursued with a view of money, then farewell, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, all hope of genuine good work.

The saying "the business of art is different than the purpose of art" makes sense, and what are you going to do about that? You have some obligation to get the work out there, you believe in it enough that it should be out in the public, but of course it goes through a system that takes it pretty far away from the reasons you made them.

Beautiful art sells. If it sells itself, it is an idolatrous commodity; if it sells anything else, it is a seductive advertisement.

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

So many people are exploiting the name Picasso - and, in a way, even the estate is doing it.

In earlier times there was one king and thousands of artists painting his palace. Now you’ve got thousands of artists painting for millions of people.

I think art maybe has just become very consumer-oriented, and maybe it's always been that way because it is a business.

Artists shouldn't be made famous. They have this huge aura of almost god-like quality about them, just because their craft makes a lot of money. And at the same time it is a forced importance... It is man-made so the press can feed off it.

The Muses inspire art and pretend not to notice when Mammon buys it.

The maximum value of art is that it allows the artist to express himself.

All art worthy of the name is religious.

The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea... The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.

Bleed me of art, and there won't be enough liquid left in me to spit! [Michelangelo Buonorotti]

What strip mining is to nature the art market has become to culture.

Like adverts, today's works of art aim to create a brand, even if they have no product to sell except themselves.

Films are an art form which are sold after packaging in this commercial world

The public buys "art" - but the word is drained of its meaning.

What's called art now probably has some legitimate things happening in it, but I've become more and more distrustful of a lot of it because it seems like an extension of the fashion trade and the stock market.

I never expected to sell my art. It wasn't like today where you come out of art school and they promise you a future. Now it's almost regulated in a way. When we came out of school, we just wanted to make art that'd blow your hair back and do it for sport. There was no commercial possibility that we saw.

Business Art is the step that comes after Art.

When any creativity becomes useful, it is sucked into the vortex of commercialism, and when a thing becomes commercial, it becomes the enemy of man.

When people asked to buy my work I always said no. I'd had this rather rarefied idea that I didn't want money going through my head while I was making work. But after the car crash I realized that none of my work was owned by anyone. After that, I grew up a bit.

It is not what an artist does that counts...but what he is.