Georgia O'Keeffe Quotes

Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting.

It used to be that if you stood in front of a painting you didn't understand, you'd have some obligation to guess. Now you don't.

I think we're much smarter than we were. Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it.

I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. He's very original, very accurate and acute.

Art needs to be socialised, and you need a lot of context to understand that, and that doesn't mean having read a few art history books.

I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor's-new-clothes sort of way. I think that's not right and that it's just because they don't understand the discourse.

I don't pretend to know anything about art. I make pictures for entertainment, and then the professors tell me what they mean.

The Art Snob will stand back from a picture at some distance, his head cocked slightly to one side

Buying art is not understanding art.

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.

I have a strong art-history background.

I am always rethinking how art is perceived and received, questioning our relationship to art. That's always been a constant.

People go into a gallery, and they're afraid to express their opinions about art. No one's afraid to say, 'Keanu Reeves was bad in that movie.' We see so many films that we can tell who's faking it. But with art, we can't always tell.

You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same.

Because I'm an art historian, I have some experience of writing that comes out of close attention. That's what really art history is. You're looking at something very closely, and you try to write in a meticulous way about it.

This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!

It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they were not allowed to account for a work of art mainly by tracing where it comes from, they would have to deal with it in and by itself--which is what they are most needed for.

If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it.

I spend much more time looking at art history and at different references to art than I do at actual objects.

People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.

My job is art curator, not artist. All I have ever wanted to do is immerse myself in art, to enjoy it, to learn about it, to write about it, to talk to others about it.

People look at film in a gallery, and if they walk out after two minutes they know they haven't seen the whole work. But then people look at a painting for two minutes and think they've seen it. Certain paintings are made to be consumed fast. But some require a slowed-down time. You have to go back to them.

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

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

I don't worry about whether anyone knows anything about art.