Seth Godin Quotes

This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!

I don't go to different countries to criticise their political system and tell them what they should be doing - what do I know?

I was truly ignorant about art before the film.

I've always said that an art critic can put aside politics around art.

The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion.

Two of my favorite artists are Josh Smith and Joe Bradley. But I argued against them for years, until I grew to love them and felt stupid for my immediate reaction towards their work.

The arts are not just instantaneous pleasure - if you don't like it, the artist is wrong. I belong to the generation which says if you don't like it, you don't understand and you ought to find out.

The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it's dead for you.

Everybody's an art critic.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as criticism.

Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.

The greatest honor that can be paid to the work of art, on its pedestal of ritual display, is to describe it with sensory completeness. We need a science of description. Criticism is ceremonial revivification.

You’re supposed to expand your mind to fit the art, you’re not supposed to chop the art down to fit your mind.

It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art... Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings.

A public that tries to do without criticism, and asserts that it knows what it wants or likes, brutalizes the arts and loses its cultural memory. Art for art's sake is a retreat from criticism which ends in an impoverishment of civilized life itself.

People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.

Travellers with closed minds can tell us little except about themselves

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art - it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.

Bigotry is the disease of ignorance, of morbid minds; enthusiasm of the free and buoyant. Education and free discussion are the antidotes of both.

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.

I really don't know what's good or bad art because all the art I like people tell me is tasteless.

A good critic is the man who describes his adventures among masterpieces.

You're an enemy of art and I pity your ignorance," Domingo said.

Critics of art are like eunuchs in harem. They see how it's done when the men come to see the women, but they can't do it themselves.