Jerry Saltz Quotes

Art does not exist for politics, or for instruction- it exists primarily for pleasure, or it is nothing.

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing?

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure.

a work that intends to be art must first be entertaining.

The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art.

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

I am afraid that as evangelicals, we think that a work of art only has value if we reduce it to a tract.

I'd always wanted to know the difference between a mark that was art and one that wasn't.

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

The word "art" does not designate the concept of a mere eventuality; it is a concept of rank.

A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward; it may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class.

For many artists and critics, beauty is a discredited idea. It denotes the saccharine sylvan scenes and cheesy melodies that appealed to Granny.

I think in any work of art, there always will be randomness about what is good, what is bad.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

I don't see art as entertainment.

Art, if it is successful, needs no explanation.

Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

Sometimes good art jumps out at me; most of the time I see bad art, or see nothing at all and just drift, feeling weird, pretending to be fine.

A work becomes a work of art when one re-evaluates the values of nature and adds one's own spirituality.

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.

Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense. A hill or tree cannot make a good painting just because it is a hill or tree. It is lines and colors put together so that they may say something.

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.