Mason Cooley Quotes

Don't be dismayed by the opinions of editors, or critics. They are only the traffic cops of the arts.

Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.

There are so many things in the world - in the cities - so much to see. Does art need to represent this variety and contribute to its proliferation? Can art be that free? The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make.

My job as art critic is to watch artists dance naked in public, and then I will, in turn, dance naked critically in public.

I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing.

Art is not a democracy, in fact art is the enemy of democracy

The art world is the biggest joke going. It's a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak. And modern art is a disgrace - never have so many people used so much stuff and taken so long to say so little.

Know that the secret of the arts is to correct nature.

This is what it is the business of the artist to do. Art is theft, art is armed robbery, art is not pleasing your mother.

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

The idea of content in art is today merely a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism.

Kitsch is art that follows established rules in a time when all rules in art are put into question by each artist.

When critics disagree the artist is in accord with himself.

I can't work without a model. I won't say I turn my back on nature ruthlessly in order to turn a study into a picture, arranging the colors, enlarging and simplifying; but in the matter of form I am too afraid of departing from the possible and the true.

A critic has no right to the narrowness which is the frequent prerogative of the creative artist.

Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.

As an artist I'd choose the thing that's beautiful more than the one that's true.

In art, theories are as useful as a doctor's prescription; one must be sick to believe them.

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order.

The whole thrust of modern art, as far as I understand it, is expanding the role of the artist as a kind of esthetician, someone who actually spends his time, is trained in a way to deal with qualities.

The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.

Regardless of the medium, be it television or feature or documentary, I'm not gonna distinguish and worry about my particular canon, whatever that means.

I want to do just, like, regular art. Whatever is made today on canvas goes up against all of art history. It's the most radical thing.

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

You can't just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.