Peter Doig Quotes

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.

I don't read the critics.

Charles Saatchi has never liked my work at all.

In the eight years I worked at newspapers, even during a little stretch when I was a film critic, I was never, ever doing exclusively criticism. In the daily newspaper world, much more value is placed on reporting than on thinking abstractly about art. The eight years I was in newspapers, I was mainly a journalist in the conventional sense, and just doing criticism when there were opportunities.

The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself.

When a film is reviled, you open a film and people say "Oh, it's the stupidest thing, it's the worst movie." You think: oh, nobody's going to ever speak to you again. But, it doesn't happen. Nobody cares. You know, they read it and they say "Oh, they hated your film." You care, at the time. But they don't. Nobody else cares.

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.

While the authority of the doctor or plumber is never questioned, everyone deems himself a good judge and an adequate arbiter of what a work of art should be and how it should be done.

Over and over again did the Attorney-General cry out aloud, in the agony of his cause, 'What is to become of painting if the critics withhold their lash?

I think it is the responsibility of critics to rely less strenuously on, to use a Hollywood phrase, "what they can live with," and more on an examination of the works of art from an aesthetic and clinical point of view.

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.

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 haven't read a single word that a critic has written about me since 1994.

I don't read reviews until after I'm done with a production, but when I do finally get to them, I'm always sort of floored by what the bad ones say.

I do remember at my very first opening in 1979 another artist coming up to me, and he was haranguing me, saying, "Did you really intend for these things to be so dumb? You just put it there and took a picture of it." He wouldn't let it go. So that's what made me think about the dumbness aspect more.

Sometimes I just think people are haters. And if they're haters, you can listen to what they have to say but you have to take it with a grain of salt.

It would be so much better if the critics would come, not on first nights, but on last nights, when they could exercise their undoubted flair for funeral orations.

When someone writes a really nasty piece about me. I think they're generally untrue because I think I'm a nice person.

Critics don't bother me because if I do badly, I know I'm bad before they even write it. And if I'm good, I know I'm good. I know best about myself, so a critic doesn't anger me.

A writer judging his own work is like deceived husband - he is frequently the last person to appreciate the true state of affairs.

Every art critic and every writer doesn't have a frame to start off from. If I made a statement saying, "This is Abstract Expressionism," they could go, "Well, he failed miserably," or, "Fantastic, this is a new genius!" But in art history, I don't see any of the artists I like spewing bullshit. I don't see anyone recording it or pronouncing what they were doing.

Do you think it interests me that this painting represents two figures? These two figures existed, they exist no more. The sight of them gave me an initial emotion, little by little their real presence grew indistinct they became a fiction for me, then they disappeared, or rather, were turned into problems of all kinds. For me they are no longer two figures but shapes and colours, don't misunderstand me, shapes and colours, though, that sum up the idea of the two figures and preserve the vibration of their existence.

There will always be critics. On one hand, criticism can be positive. On the other hand, criticism can be negative. But critics will always be watching the game. If you listen to everybody, you can go crazy. I have my own point of view, and I always try to keep it.

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

To me, there's a huge difference between criticism and reviewing. I really love reading good criticism of television and film. To me, a critic is someone who analyzes a show, describes it, talks about the people in it, puts it in historical context of other shows like it, compares it and stuff, and then talks about the intent of the show and whether it failed or didn't.