Tom Stoppard Quotes

Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing?

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

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

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

Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

A great work of Art demands a great thought or a thought of beauty adequately expressed. - Neither in Art nor Literature more than in Life can an ordinary thought be made interesting because well-dressed.

I cannot conceive any work of art as having a separate existence from life itself

The word "art" does not designate the concept of a mere eventuality; it is a concept of rank.

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.

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.

I don't put a great deal of stock in art trophies.

Those who are not very concerned with art want poems or pictures to record for them something they already know - as one might want a picture of a place he loves.

Art experts are unfailingly opposed to Art for the simple reason that they are interested in Art - but Art is not interested in Art. Art is interested in life.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

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

What interests me most is when a work of art is no longer just an object, but also touches reality and life.

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

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

I need art around me always.

The social dimension of the art world is fascinating to me, but I also want to entertain the reader, so I will let a character say something funny.

Just because someone said painting is dead doesn't mean that it's a fact or the truth - painting is the soul food of art, in a way.

When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

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.

The ultimate justification of the work of art is to help the spectator to become a work of art himself.