Kevin Bleyer Quotes

It may well be, of course, that America's pop culture is on balance better than our high art. I don't think so, but you can certainly make a case that the best of it aspires to a degree of aesthetic and emotional seriousness that is directly comparable to all but the very greatest works of high art.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

I know that the arts are important. I'm not denying that, but I can't associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

If you are great, 'El Topo' is a great picture. If you are limited, 'El Topo' is limited.

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.

People go to see beautiful paintings to see how much they cost. Wow. The practical value is that it shows you what the human spirit can do.

Sometimes great, banned works defy the censor's description and impose themselves on the world - 'Ulysses,' 'Lolita,' the 'Arabian Nights.'

The price of a work of art has nothing to do with what the work of art is, can do, or is worth on an existential, alchemical level.

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

Great art should be shown with great excitement.

No matter how hard I tried to popularize, I never cheapened a great work of art.

On one level, of course, the notion of judging films or books or music against each other is completely ridiculous. Who's to say '12 Years A Slave' is a better film than 'The Wolf of Wall Street'? Or that one album in a certain genre is better than another in a completely different genre?

The idea of taking what people call the 'entertainment culture' as a focus of study, including historical perspective, is not a bad idea.

Should graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: It's way more important than that.

Critics, at least generally, want to regard works of fiction as independent entities, whose virtues and failures must be reckoned apart from the circumstances of their creation, and even apart from the intentions of their creator.

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.

I really appreciate anyone trying to inject art into mainstream film.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Art to me is not precious enough that I feel territorial about what the word gets applied to. Conversations about what counts as art and what doesn't doesn't captivate my attention very much.

All books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time.

It's great, I guess, when your paintings are hanging up in a museum.

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

A great painting is a great painting.

A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable.

I don't mean this, but I'm going to say it anyway. I don't really think of pop art and serious art as being that far apart.