Jean Chretien Quotes

It was Public Art, defined as art that is purchased by experts who are not spending their own personal money.

Public money should be spent on art but through individuals not committees.

The Louvre stopped buying paintings in 1848, and neither the Metropolitan nor the Hermitage acquire contemporary material.

I see a resurgence of interest in poetry. I am less optimistic about the prospects for the arts when it comes to federal funding.

As an artist I have an even more abiding interest in the compact between the Arts and Government.

A country like Belgium, or socialist countries in central Europe spend more money on art education than the United States, which is a really puzzling thought.

I buy some art but I don't like to talk about it.

Taxpayers don't want their money spent more than a very, very slender amount on actual buying art or paying for concerts.

I have written favourably in support of subsidy for the arts since the 1960s, and I continue to believe absolutely in subsidy, as I do in the BBC licence fee.

I'd mortgage any house for art.

A hundred million dollars in the art world is a substantial amount of cash to do anything.

In Germany, we often hear the absurd complaint that museums don't have the money to buy paintings. Of course, I'm not talking about me and my paintings. There are, after all, more popular painters in this country.

Justin Trudeau is always saying diversity's our strength. It is not our strength.

If you have the opportunity to have the best of the artist, then if you overpay, it doesn't matter. Eventually, the market will reward you. If it raises the value of our collection, we go for it.

I suppose what's so amazing about working at the National Theatre is that, because it's a subsidized theatre, you're not trying to create a product that's going to have a mass market in order to make the money back.

The relationship between government and art must necessarily be a delicate one. It would not be appropriate for the government to try to define what is good or what is true or what is beautiful. But government can provide nourishment to the ground within which these ideas spring forth from the seeds of inspiration within the human mind.

I have not collected art. Art collected me. I never found paintings. They found me. I have never even owned a work of art. They owned me.

It has been difficult to hold onto many paintings but I have retained a few.

It may be a point of great pride to have a Van Gogh on the living room wall, but the prospects of having Van Gogh himself in the living room would put a great many devoted art lovers to rout.

In America, we've spent trillions of dollars overseas while allowing our own infrastructure to fall into total disrepair and decay.

It wasn't that I amassed it with aims of selling it and becoming a rich man. My personality demanded that I be surrounded by the best examples of the world's art.

The Atlas belongs to the Lenbachhaus in Munich - it's long since ceased to belong to me. Occasionally I run across it somewhere, and I think it's interesting because it looks different each time.

I came to Paris with four écus in my pocket, and I’d have fought with anybody who told me I was in no condition to buy the Louvre.

I'm still around artists. I don't have anymore wall space. And I don't have the money to collect anymore, the prices are outrageous.

I don't like masterpieces having one-night stands in collectors' homes between auctions.