Val Kilmer Quotes

Many say an art dealer running a museum is a 'conflict of interest.' But maybe the art world has lived an artificial or unintentional lie all of these years when it comes to conflicts of interest.

Any critic will tell you that there are a few dealers where you get a little bit scared to go into their gallery, and that's unfair to them, to yourself, to the reader, and to the artist. But I just want to look. When I'm done looking and writing, I love talking to art dealers. They are so alive and interesting and amazing - from Larry Gagosian all the way on down.

In Germany, we often hear the absurd complaint that museums don't have the money to buy paintings. Of course, I'm not talking about me and my paintings. There are, after all, more popular painters in this country.

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.

My mum is a big collector of art.

The Louvre stopped buying paintings in 1848, and neither the Metropolitan nor the Hermitage acquire contemporary material.

My own interest in art was because of my mother. My father didn't like contemporary art, so he didn't give her large sums to spend. So, she began buying prints and drawings. During my school days, I remember sitting in on many of the early meetings.

The last time money left the art world, intrepid types maxed out their credit cards and opened galleries, and a few of them have become the best in the world.

I love art dealers. In some ways, they're my favorite people in the art world. Really. I love that they put their money where their taste is, create their own aesthetic universes, support artists, employ people, and do all of this while letting us see art for free. Many are visionaries.

They decided to establish a museum of modern art where works by contemporary artists would be shown. Mother was viewed as a very progressive person, and not everybody liked the paintings she bought.

The art world is molting - some would say melting. Galleries are closing; museums are scaling back.

It's sort of a law of the art world: The stuff that grows in importance is only the stuff you bought because it wowed you.

I'm an art collector, have been for years, and I paint. Needless to say, the artwork in my houses, apartment is extensive.

I don't think the art market is for everybody. Yeah, of course we have a global gallery. But we're like the one-tenth of the one-tenth of the one-tenth. OK? Not just who's buying but who's really seriously engaged with art.

I began collecting artwork as a way to help young artists to promote their work as well as to increase awareness of contemporary art among the younger generation.

I'm still around artists. I don't have anymore wall space. And I don't have the money to collect anymore, the prices are outrageous.

Through my friend Tony Shafrazi, who's an art dealer and an artist himself - he helped to show Basquiat and Keith Haring, and has worked with the Francis Bacon estate - it was really through my friendship with Tony that I developed even more of an interest in art.

I would love to collect art at some point, but I think the whole rap/art world thing is getting kind of corny.

It makes me happy to think that this world of art-as-investment is a minuscule fraction of the art world overall. Most people who create, trade and own art do it for a much simpler reason. They just like it.

I love to collect modern art.

The art world can be very intimidating because it's just so vast. You talk to people who are really clued in to all the young artists and coming into it you're never going to be able to catch up immediately, even though there's pressure to.

I want to give my compliments to Australia. Ever since your government paid a few million dollars for a Jackson Pollack painting, I figure that it must be a marvellous country.

I collect a lot of art.

I don't see myself as a great discoverer of artists, like Charles Saatchi.

I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that.