Robert Gottlieb Quotes

The real change that paintings undergo is in the perceptions of the viewer.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.

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

You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art.

Art, if it is successful, needs no explanation.

Art is to be admired rather than explained. The jargon of these sculptors is beyond me. I do not precisely know why I admire a green granite, female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner.

Sometimes good art jumps out at me; most of the time I see bad art, or see nothing at all and just drift, feeling weird, pretending to be fine.

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

There are so many reactions to art that make sense to me - but 'ick' means something.

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.

There is no best anything in art.

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.

Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, “Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.” So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

A work of art is one through which the consciousness of the artist is able to give its emotions to anyone who is prepared to receive them. There is no such thing as bad art.

You can't prove Rembrandt is better than Norman Rockwell - although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I'd say you were shunning complexity, were secretly conservative, and hadn't really looked at either painter's work. Taste is a blood sport.

A work of art doesn't exist outside the perception of the audience.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

Unless you are a born connoisseur of art, you will not be able to judge by yourself why certain art is superior to other art.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

It is not an aesthetic misstep to make the viewer aware of the paint and the painter's hand. Such an empathetic awareness lies at the heart of aesthetic appreciation.

Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.

I'm not really well educated - other than an art survey course at the High School of Art and Design in New York when I was, like, 15. I don't know the history of art, but I got over intimidation from the art world when I realized that I was allowed to feel whatever I want and like whatever I want.

It's really interesting with art-movies too, but art especially - to see how your attitude toward artists and works and your level of appreciation of them is always shifting and changing over the years.

Everybody thinks they know what art should be. But very few of them have the sense that is necessary to experience painting, that is the sense of sight, that sees colors and forms as living reality in the picture.