Yoko Ono 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.

We do not judge great art. It judges us.

I'm lucky enough and wealthy enough to be able to buy photographs and buy art that inspires me from day to day. I don't want a Picasso on my wall; it's great art, but it's dead art to me. I'd rather have a photograph by someone I've never heard of that really inspires me.

The value of art is in the observer.

Great art should be shown with great excitement.

If you are great, 'El Topo' is a great picture. If you are limited, 'El Topo' is limited.

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.

And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.

I think it's always hard for people to get their head around the fact that populist, commercial films can also actually be great works of art.

We have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it.

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

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

Great art, the more specific you are, the more universal it becomes, and that's the thing that I loved about 'The Wire.'

It never ceases to amaze me how art can touch and inspire people.

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

Lend your ears to music, open your eyes to painting, and... stop thinking! Just ask yourself whether the work has enabled you to 'walk about' into a hitherto unknown world. If the answer is yes, what more do you want?

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

There's an audience for all kinds of great art.

When we can't determine what is art - when you get to that point where we're not sure, that's the greatest likelihood that we're actually experiencing something great. But I think that's what the art world is most afraid of, because you lose that security. Then we don't know how to assign evaluation, whether it's cultural or otherwise.

A great many people seem to think writing poetry is worthwhile, even though it pays next to nothing and is not as widely read as it should be.

I have never collected an object or figure from Africa or Oceania because of anything curious about it or because of its utility or historic interest. Everything has been chosen entirely because of its aesthetic significance; its form, feeling, structure, and plastic values.

What makes people the world over stand in line for Van Gogh is not that they will see beautiful pictures but that in an indefinable way they will come away feeling better human beings. And that is exactly what Van Gogh hoped for.

I don't think there's any formula for what makes great art.