Gregory Benford Quotes

The huge problem in our society is the enormous ignorance of the ideas that underlie modern art.

There are artists with palettes and easels selling the kind of modern art that Soviet art critics used to critique with bulldozers. Judging by the paintings I saw, the Soviets were right the first time.

If art is any good, it has so much of a longer trajectory than one night. Contemporary art is separate from art openings. In the end, it depends on the strength of ideas in each piece.

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.

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.

I think we're much smarter than we were. Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it.

People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.

You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

For many artists and critics, beauty is a discredited idea. It denotes the saccharine sylvan scenes and cheesy melodies that appealed to Granny.

I have never been against new art as such; some of it is good, much is crap, most is somewhere in between.

All art is bad, but modern art is the worst.

We do not judge great art. It judges us.

I thought conceptual art was a joke.

It's clever, but is it Art?

Does any art have a practical value? People love to talk about how expensive a painting is. That's the only way we can talk about paintings in this century.

Art is good, bad, boring, ugly, useful to us or not.

Art indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social utility of creative acts.

I was an art history major, but never specifically contemporary. I would say where I really stopped were the abstract expressionists in the New York school.

If what you want to do is make good art, decide what's good and try to imitate it.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

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.

But the one thing you should. not do is to suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY.

When art is defined by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, you've got a society that's impoverished.

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.