Tim O'Brien Quotes

When you walk past a painting in a museum, if it doesn't make you feel something, then it's probably a failure.

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

Great Art is Great because it inspired you greatly. If it didn't, no matter what the critics, the museums and the galleries say, it's not great art for you.

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

Art is good, bad, boring, ugly, useful to us or not. It does or doesn't disturb optical monotony, and succeeds or fails in surmounting sterility of style or visual stereotype; it creates new beauty or it doesn't.

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.

The value of art is in the observer.

What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.

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.

Great art should be shown with great excitement.

I believe that true art is universal in its appeal.

It's not about perfection. What's a perfect painting? What's interesting about a perfect painting?

A great painting is a great painting.

We say arts education is good for general education, but that's not the point. The arts are what great nations are remembered for. They are a mirror.

Once people write criticism about something - and even in 1967 I was far from alone - they're assuming it's art, and art is supposed to last.

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'.

Bad art is never really enjoyed in the same sense in which good art is enjoyed. It is only "liked": it never startles, prostrates, and takes captive.

I'll buy a bottle for anyone who can tell me what makes a picture beautiful!

No erotic work of art is filth if it is artistically significant; it is only turned into filth through the beholder if he is filthy.

I am afraid that as evangelicals, we think that a work of art only has value if we reduce it to a tract.

The word "art" does not designate the concept of a mere eventuality; it is a concept of rank.

A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward; it may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.

The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.

Paintings can make you cry and it's just **colored dirt**.

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.