Conrad Hall Quotes

A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page.

You can't just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.

A picture, to be an interesting picture, must be more than a picture, otherwise it is only a reproduction of an object, and not an object of value in itself.

Not all art is great; most of it's rubbish.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

There is no reason for me to show my collection in New York, because it's not about craft and technique there.

I have never collected an object or figure from Africa or Oceania because of anything curious about it or because of its utility or historic interest. Everything has been chosen entirely because of its aesthetic significance; its form, feeling, structure, and plastic values.

I don't think there's any formula for what makes great art.

We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class.

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

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'.

Well, why is this art? Why isn't that art?

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

Regard it as just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral. The size of the project means little in art, beyond the money matter. It is the quality of the character that really counts.

If it's good art, it's good.

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.

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

Art doesn't transform. It just plain forms.

I have to say that I reject somewhat the distinction between something called art and something called public art. I think all art demands and desires to be seen.

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

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

Life is very nice, but it lacks form. It's the aim of art to give it some.