Elisabeth von Thurn und Taxis Quotes

I don't buy art just to make artists happy any more than I want to make them sad if I sell their work.

I think it's probably the Dutch who are to blame for starting the whole 'art business', because before they came along, art was attached to relatively stable structures, and it was everybody's. It was like going to the movies.

I'm very hard on the art world just being a big business.

Ever since Marcel Duchamp appropriated mass market objects and pronounced them 'readymades' and Andy Warhol elevated the Campbell's soup can and Brillo Box to art, artists and designers have been blurring the lines between fine art and commerce.

The artists are now big brands.

What I think is dreadful about art is the way it's related to the money afterward. Not when you do it... But after that, it's like 5,000 rich people have access to it. A movie, even though it can be a bad movie or a good movie, it is more democratic. The people who buy my films, the people who buy my installations it's sometimes a foundation or a museum. When it's a foundation, it's related to very, very, very rich people - who are your enemies! Your enemies are feeding you. But you're not meeting them. So it's a very strange thing.

There are things going on in galleries recently that have shocked me. What I'm going to say is really controversial, but what I find the most provocative is the commerciality of art in general. And the fact that a lot of people have forgotten what the meaning of art is and what the intention behind it is.

I make paintings, try to get others to look at them and hopefully buy them.

When money and hype recede from the art world, one thing I won't miss will be what curator Francesco Bonami calls the 'Eventocracy.' All this flashy 'art-fair art' and those highly produced space-eating spectacles and installations wow you for a minute until you move on to the next adrenaline event.

The buyer needs a hundred eyes, the seller not one.

New York is more where art is bought than where art is made.

If we imagine that the only right that we have is to make commodifiable objects, then we limit our practice, and we limit the great potential for an understanding between collectors, curators and galleries.

Art dealing is when you're doing it as a business.

Galleries, and they're all the same, and rightly so, they sell work.

Art is for the elite because it has a very high price-point of entry. And when one is in that social strata, they look down at illustrators because they just draw things directly for a few hundred dollars, and that's seen as being a bit grubby. Galleries allow artists to stay relatively divorced from the financial aspects of their trade.

Perhaps the world of art is just one vast pretence, in which we all take part since, after all, there is no real cost to it, except to those like Charles Saatchi, rich enough to splash out on junk?

I think art maybe has just become very consumer-oriented, and maybe it's always been that way because it is a business.

Art fairs bring attention to up and coming artists and some amazing new works. They are a way to connect everyone with what's happening at the cutting edge of art, both new and historic.

I've never been what they call a 'pure gallerist.' I find that somewhat pretentious, honestly - I'm an art dealer. I like to show great artists of our time, but I also like dealing. And I think they reinforce each other.

Selling art is a lot different than making it.

I pledge allegiance to the living, and I will defend art from history. I will rescue art from the future, from its attrition into taste, and from the speculative notion that it will become more valuable with time.

I'll never forget my first Art Basel.

I'm not totally comfortable with the ways in which our culture monetises art and literature.

I think the problem with the art market and the art scene is that it is its own beast. It thrives and breathes and defecates independently of the artist.

Art fairs are a lot like professional proms - you make contacts, have a lot to look at, and in some cases, you make friends forever. I think that for artists, they can be a bit controversial: they stimulate curiosity, but at the same time, you're always trying to not have your work hung on a wall.