Ilka Chase Quotes

When someone between twenty and forty says, apropos of a work of art, 'I know what I like,' he is really saying 'I have no taste of my own but accept the taste of my cultural milieu.

Good taste" is a virtue of the keepers of museums. If you scorn bad taste, you will have neither painting nor dancing, neither palaces nor gardens.

Art has got nothing to do with taste.

If your choice enters into it, then taste is involved - bad taste, good taste, uninteresting taste. Taste is the enemy of art, A-R-T.

I always loved aesthetics. Not particularly fashion, but an idea of beauty.

Those art lovers who pride themselves mostly on *taste* usually possess no other talent.

There is no best anything in art.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

I know what I like—I like art—and I like what I know.

Taste is the fundamental quality which sums up all other qualities. It is the ne plus ultra of the intelligence.

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.

Only the work of art itself can raise the standard of taste.

Taste is the power of relishing or rejecting whatever is offered for the entertainment of the imagination.

A good taste is often unconscious; a just taste is always conscious.

It is the heart that makes the critic, not the nose.

Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

The most important thing in art is taste.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

[Good taste] is a nineteenth-century concept. And good taste has never really been defined. The effort of projecting 'good taste' is so studied that it offends me. No, I prefer to negate that. We have to put a period to so-called good taste.

I think all art is subjective - that whoever's watching it or listening to it will decide whether it's good or bad.

Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.

He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.

I guess I have a gift for expressing pedestrian tastes. In a way, it's kind of depressing.

I don't take art as seriously as politics.