Fred Kaplan Quotes

I don't have anything to say about other people's art and their work.

The entire world of art has reached such a low level, it has been commercialized to such a degree that art and everything related to it has become one of the most trivial activities of our epoch.

Fairs are beneath the dignity of art. To stand there in a booth and hawk your wares - it is just not how you sell art.

If the standard for art is the decency of its creators, we're going to have a lot of empty museums.

I think in any work of art, there always will be randomness about what is good, what is bad.

I personally don't distinguish between artistic and commercial films.

I do not wish to comment on the work; if it does not speak for itself, it is a failure.

There's no art where there's no fee.

I don't think [price] reflects if the work is good or bad.A good artist shouldn't be nervous about that.

The only things that distinguish the photographer from everybody else are his pictures: they alone are the basis for our special interest in him. If pictures cannot be understood without knowing details of the artist's private life, then that is a reason for faulting them; major art, by definition, can stand independent of its maker.

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.

grievance does not make for great art.

All bad art is the result of good intentions.

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

I don't put a great deal of stock in art trophies.

If it's bad art, it's bad religion, no matter how pious the subject.

I'm making entertainment, but I'm making art. This is my art. Hopefully, it's profitable, hopefully it makes money, but at the end of the day I want it to be remembered for its artistic value as well as its entertainment value.

Maybe that's where the new art comes in - to somehow have your eye on the marketplace and harness your art to come up with something you can be proud of creatively.

It's in our nature. If you are a plumber, there is an objective way to establish whether you put together a great piping system or not. Art is a bit more slippery than that. So, when you fill a gallery with dirt and someone comes along waving wads of bills, it's difficult not to take them because they become a tangible acknowledgement that what you've been doing actually makes sense.

Those who are concerned with the arts are often asked questions, not always sympathetic ones, about the use or value of what they are doing. It is probably impossible to answer such questions directly, or at any rate to answer the people who ask them.

You may dislike the intention enormously but your judgment of the artistic merit of the work must not be based on your view of what it's about. The work of art must be judged by how well it succeeds in its intention.

A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

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

We are not being true to the artist as a man if we consider his art work junk simply because we differ with his outlook on life. Christian schools, Christian parents, and Christian pastors often have turned off young people at just this point. Because the schools, the pastors, and the parents did not make a distinction between technical excellence and content, the whole of much great art has been rejected with scorn and ridicule. Instead, if the artist's technical excellence is high, he is to be praised for this, even if we differ with his world view. Man must be treated fairly as man.

I just don't think it honors God to create mediocre art.