Auguste Renoir Quotes

To say that a work of art is good, but incomprehensible to the majority of men, is the same as saying of some kind of food that it is very good but that most people can't eat it.

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

You need intelligence, and you need to look. You need a gaze, a wide gaze, penetrating and roving - thats what's useful for art.

The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament.

Wonder at the first sight of works of art may be the effect of ignorance and novelty; but real admiration and permanent delight in them are the growth of taste and knowledge.

Nobody is fully alive who cannot apply to art as much discrimination and appreciation as he applies to the work by which he earns his living.

Like many members of the uncultured, Cheez-It consuming public, I am not good at grasping modern art.

Anyone who presumes to teach art has no understanding of it.

The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for "art" that leaves him unmoved--if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such.

The learned understand the reason of art; the unlearned feel the pleasure.

We don't all dig Shakespeare uniformly, or even 'Little Red Riding Hood.' The understanding of art depends finally upon one's willingness to extend one's humanity and one's knowledge of human life.

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.

This was my first encounter with art as art (he saw 'Pinky' painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence and 'The Blue Boy" painted by Thomas Gainborough).. ..somebody actually MADE those paintings.. ..(it) was the first time I realized you could be an artist.

There is something wrong with a work of art if it can be understood by a policeman.

What's so astonishing about not understanding? There are so many things in art, beginning with art itself, that one doesn't understand. A painter doesn't see everything that he has put in his painting.

It is all very well for people with fine arts degrees, but for ordinary people like myself, we want a statue to look like the person.

The fact that the work is affirmed by the Museum of Contemporary Art I think sends continued signals that this is worth paying attention to, looking at, and understanding.

The appreciation of the merits of art (of the emotions it conveys) depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life...

If I stop being on good behaviour for a moment, my dark little secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and simply cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others - a received pronunciation.

It became a question of taste. I have a certain taste in art history. And that - I had a huge library of art history books in my studio. And I would simply have the models go through those books with me, and we began a conversation about, like, what painting means, why we do it, why people care about it why or how it can mean or make sense today.

I have no evangelical feelings about art at all. I despise art education. Art doesn't lend itself to education. There is no knowledge there. It's a set of propositions about how things should look.

Above all, it is a matter of loving art, not understanding it.

If I don't understand it, it must be art.

I think all art is subjective - that whoever's watching it or listening to it will decide whether it's good or bad.

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.