Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis Quotes

It's not that I can't find art beautiful. I just don't know what to do, standing there in the gallery. I don't know what to think about. Once I've seen it, I've seen it; that takes about two seconds. I am interested and then immediately bored, immediately.

I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week, and no matter what kind of mood I'm in, no matter how bad the art is, I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good.

A painting in a museum hears more ridiculous opinions than anything else in the world.

I'm not really well educated - other than an art survey course at the High School of Art and Design in New York when I was, like, 15. I don't know the history of art, but I got over intimidation from the art world when I realized that I was allowed to feel whatever I want and like whatever I want.

Shouldn't a great museum foster serious seeing before all else?

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

I was truly ignorant about art before the film.

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.

There isn't any art until some creature sees and consumes it. And has a reaction.

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.

One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience.

I don't read the art mags. I read the newspapers.

My education in the arts began at the Cleveland Museum of Art. As a Cleveland child, I visited the museum's halls and corridors, gallery spaces and shows, over and over. For me, the Cleveland Museum was a school of my very own - the place where my eyes opened, my tastes developed, my ideas about beauty and creativity grew.

Often, when art from the canon is brought in to fine art classes, it is used as a prop to inspire art-making projects but more rarely as something to study in-depth for itself.

Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a rewarding time, or you don't. You don't have to say why afterward. You don't have to say anything.

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.

Like any artwork, things become richer if you know more about them; but I don't think that's crucial.

Buying art is not understanding art.

If I had been in the gallery, I'd have gone home.

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

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

I'm a huge art buff.

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 have a strong art-history background.

It's hard to explain your emotions when you see a work of art.