Robert Anton Wilson Quotes

Now, there are so many movies, so many festivals, and so many awards going on, each judged with each other, like your work is worse than others and that's not fair. How can you tell what's best and what's worst from these awards? We're talking about art.

We have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it.

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

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

I know that the arts are important. I'm not denying that, but I can't associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

I don't believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?

I don't have anything to say about other people's art and their work.

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

The problem with art is, it's not like the game of golf where you put the ball in the hole. There's no umpire; there's no judge. There are no rules. It's one of its problems. But it's also one of the great things about art. It becomes a question of what lasts.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as criticism.

Saying that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic worth, is like saying that he had rheumatism or suffered from diabetes. Madness, in fact, is a medical term that can claim no more notice from the objective critic than he grants the charge of heresy raised by the theologian, or the charge of immorality raised by the police.

There is no such thing as #1 in art.

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.

We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors, and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn and ridicule. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, he is to be praised for this, even if we differ with his world view. Man must be treated fairly as man.

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?

The ultimate judgment of a work of art, whether it be a masterpiece or a lesser event, must be solely in terms of its artistic success and not on Freudian guesswork.

Ideally, each piece of art's its own unique object, and its evaluation's always present-tense.

Works of art must persist as objects of contemplation.

Bad critics judge a work of art by comparing it to pre-existing theories. They always go wrong when confronted with a masterpiece because masterpieces make their own rules.

If you criticize a fine genius, the odds are that you are out of your reckoning, and, instead of the poet, are censuring your owncaricature of him.

There's no connection between consumption of art and moral stamina at all.

Most works of art are, necessarily, bad...; one suffers through the many for the few.

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

Acting, music, painting... it's very subjective. So what I might think is a great actor, you might think is not a very good actor at all.

If the work of art is good enough, it must not be criticized for its theme. I don't think it can be argued.