Alan Arkin Quotes

Now, there are so many movies, so many festivals, and so many awards going on, each judged with each other, like your work is worse than others and that's not fair. How can you tell what's best and what's worst from these awards? We're talking about art.

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.

I think in any work of art, there always will be randomness about what is good, what is bad.

Artistic judgments are silly if expressed as dogmas, at least until we get an "artometer" which can measure objectively how many micro-michelangelos or kilo-homers of genius a given artifact has in it.

When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art.

The default mode of modern writing about art is to despise any notion of singularity as so much overheated genius-fetishism.

Artistic qualities that once seemed undeniable don't seem so now. Sometimes these fluctuations are only fickleness of taste, momentary glitches in an artist's work, or an artist getting ahead of his audience (it took me ten years to catch up to Albert Oehlen). Other times, however, these problems mean there's something wrong with the art.

Literature, of course, is not a contest.

On one level, of course, the notion of judging films or books or music against each other is completely ridiculous. Who's to say '12 Years A Slave' is a better film than 'The Wolf of Wall Street'? Or that one album in a certain genre is better than another in a completely different genre?

I'm not one who divides music, dance or art into various categories. Either something works, or it doesn't.

If your choice enters into it, then taste is involved - bad taste, good taste, uninteresting taste. Taste is the enemy of art, A-R-T.

I think you can leave the arts, superior or inferior, to the conscience of mankind.

For me, it doesn't matter how difficult something is, it doesn't matter how impressive it is, it's what sounds best that really counts.

I don't have anything to say about other people's art and their work.

How can we say any one actor's work was better than another's?

An artist is usually responsible only for the creation of a particular art. It's up to the critics to label it.

Nowhere in the job description of an artist is the requirement that I must validate your taste.

If gaming were seen as an art, the important question would be not whether games are good for us but whether they are good, full stop.

There are three distinct kind of judges upon all new authors or productions; the first are those who know no rules, but pronounce entirely from their natural taste and feelings; the second are those who know and judge by rules; and the third are those who know, but are above the rules. These last are those you should wish to satisfy. Next to them rate the natural judges; but ever despise those opinions that are formed by the rules.

If the work of art is good enough, it must not be criticized for its theme. I don't think it can be argued.

It's in our nature. If you are a plumber, there is an objective way to establish whether you put together a great piping system or not. Art is a bit more slippery than that. So, when you fill a gallery with dirt and someone comes along waving wads of bills, it's difficult not to take them because they become a tangible acknowledgement that what you've been doing actually makes sense.

You may dislike the intention enormously but your judgment of the artistic merit of the work must not be based on your view of what it's about. The work of art must be judged by how well it succeeds in its intention.

We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors, and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn and ridicule. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, he is to be praised for this, even if we differ with his world view. Man must be treated fairly as man.

The picture waits for my verdict; it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claim to praise.

Your work may be great and not make its way into the big picture... like Van Gogh... so who's to say what's good and bad?