Damian Loeb Quotes

The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance.

If the mystical lovers of the arts, who consider all criticism dissection and all dissection destruction of enjoyment, thought logically, an exclamation like "Goodness alive!" would be the best criticism of the most deserving work of art. There are critiques which say nothing but that, only they do so more extensively.

What really drives me mad about art is that, in America, the only thing you can do is to take it apart.

I find relatively little relationship between the work of art and the immediate critical response it gets.

Why should I need an artist to explain a work of art to me? Why should it not speak out to me itself?

First of all, I should preface this by the observation that artists are not the best judges of what they've done and the word definitive does not belong, in my opinion, in any conversation about art. When somebody says it's the "definitive" something, I'm always recoiling.

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

I didn’t see any difference between being a photographer or being an artist. I didn’t make those boundaries. If someone wants to think it’s art, that’s great, but I’ll let history decide.

I read the art reviews of my work. Some critics understand my art correctly, while some don't. I simply ignore the reviews written by the latter.

I get a great laugh from artists who ridicule the critics as parasites and artists manqués — sucha horrible joke. I can’t imagine a more perfect art form, a moreperfect career than criticism. I can’t imagine anything more valuableto do.

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

I don't put a great deal of stock in art trophies.

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?

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist, his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and failure, has anything worthwhile to say of art? I don't.

I try to consider each body of work on its own terms, discretely, so terms like 'sculpture' or 'photography', in their broad sense, don't really enter into my thinking.

People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

What is art but a way of seeing?

I wrote 'The Painted Word,' about modern art, and was denounced as reactionary. In fact, it is just a history, although a rather loaded one.

People who create art would be fools to assume they know exactly what people are going to think of it.

I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as criticism.

We read critics for the perceptions, for what they tell us that we didn't fully grasp when we saw the work. The judgments we can usually make for ourselves.