Brian Eno Quotes

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.

What we value about music and literature are the moments that they create in our minds when we encounter them.

Art is not about objects of high monetary exchange. It's about reasserting our firsthand experience in present time.

I don't know if it's art, but I know I like it.

I am one of the heretics who believes that art must be enjoyed first and analyzed later.

Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted

Much of appreciating art or music is really the interpretation of the listener. To a certain extent it's projection - it's what people need or lack in themselves that they then put upon these people that they admire.

You listen to something like 'Beast Mode,' and it's almost like looking at a pretty painting.

The beauty of any artwork is that it becomes the person that's watching it: What do you take out of it?

When you start to think of the arts as not this thing that is going to get you somewhere in terms of becoming an artist or becoming famous or whatever it is that people do, but rather a way of making being in the world not just bearable, but fascinating, then it starts to get interesting again.

I still hope that more people can create art, even though artistic genres may never be the most popular or money-making genres. But the thing is, I think art is more long-lasting. It stays in people, and it changes them.

Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a rewarding time, or you don't. You don't have to say why afterward. You don't have to say anything.

I go into a gallery or museum, and I realize that I don't have to formulate any opinions if I don't want to. I don't have to think this thing through and write about it at any great length. I can think about it if I want to; if not, I can just walk out. So I can enjoy painting really a lot more than I could when I had that sort of pressure.

A work of art... is not a living thing... that walks or runs. But the making of a life. That which gives you a reaction. To some it is the wonder of man's fingers. To some it is the wonder of the mind. To some it is the wonder of technique. And to some it is how real it is. To some, how transcendent it is. Like the 5th Symphony, it presents itself with a feeling that you know it, if you have heard it once.

"We liked it" or "I didn't like it" people say. As if it were nothing higher than to please the people!

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.

Beauty doesn't have to be about anything. What's a vase about? What's a sunset or a flower about? What, for that matter, is Mozart's Twenty-third Piano Concerto about?

Art objects are inanimate sad bits of matter hanging in the dark when no one is looking. The artist only does half the work; the viewer has to come up with the rest, and it is by empowering the viewer that the miracle of art gains its force.

The delight we experience when we allow ourselves to respond to a fairy tale, the enchantment we feel, comes not from the psychological meaning of the tale (although this contributes to it) but from its literary qualities-the tale itself as a work of art.

I don't know why people see the things that they do. I wouldn't pay to see them, they don't touch me or move me in any way.

Art is a means to function thoroughly and passionately in a world that has a lot more to it than paint.

You can tell if it's a good collection if people are afraid of it. In ten years, everyone will love it.

When I have an exhibition, I usually arrange it so that if people want to, they can spend two hours there. That way, people who like it don't feel cheated when they go. I want them to walk into the exhibition space and look low and at other levels and angles. The same with emotions. I want them to be emotionally manipulated, to come out feeling something. I want them to laugh, smile, feel sad. Even if they feel angry, that's okay.

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?