William Hogarth Quotes

You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art.

I can tell really early on in a painting if I'm going to toss it or not.

We have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it.

I cannot tell good art from bad art. I have no eye for it.

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

I am of the opinion that the appreciation and the desire for what is good takes more study and insight than does the understanding and test for the best music and art.

I certainly consider a great appreciation of painting to be the best indication of a most perfect mind.

Being critical of art is a way of showing art respect. No sports writer would say, "Well the Yankees had a great season this year." No food critic would get a bad meal and say, "Oh, it was so lovely." It always strikes me as odd when people say, "Why do you write negatively about any art?" I think that everybody has mixed feelings about everything - even Goya. I mean, I look at Rembrandt sometimes and I hear a voice in my head go, "It's pretty brown."

You can't prove Rembrandt is better than Norman Rockwell - although if you actually do prefer Rockwell, I'd say you were shunning complexity, were secretly conservative, and hadn't really looked at either painter's work. Taste is a blood sport.

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.

It's not a science when you are judging art, but we'd be remiss to say you can't look at something and say, 'This is more well done than that.'

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

I've always been very opinionated, for lack of a better term, about art. Not to sound too arrogant, but I guess I'm a connoisseur of telling people what I think is good and bad.

Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.

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.

Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.

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

I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic.

I seldom have my stuff up unless I'm testing it. If I'm worrying about a painting, I put it up and see if I detest it quickly or slowly. Otherwise I have things by other artists.

Unless you are a born connoisseur of art, you will not be able to judge by yourself why certain art is superior to other art.

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

Everybody thinks they know what art should be. But very few of them have the sense that is necessary to experience painting, that is the sense of sight, that sees colors and forms as living reality in the picture.

Art is always good. It just depends if you like or not.

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

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