Andrei Tarkovsky Quotes

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.

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.

Buying art is not understanding art.

It used to be that if you stood in front of a painting you didn't understand, you'd have some obligation to guess. Now you don't.

Mostly people are ignorant, what is the language of painting. You know, they're ignorant. It is so difficult to make them aware, but time will teach them.

I don't believe in selling art by transparencies. Art is a firsthand experience.

I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor's-new-clothes sort of way. I think that's not right and that it's just because they don't understand the discourse.

I don't pretend to know anything about art. I make pictures for entertainment, and then the professors tell me what they mean.

This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!

It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they were not allowed to account for a work of art mainly by tracing where it comes from, they would have to deal with it in and by itself--which is what they are most needed for.

I don't like most contemporary art. But I think if you talked to any person who's heavily involved in contemporary art, they'd say the same thing. If you go to a biennale, you don't expect to like much of it.

If a nonartist teaches a subject called art, it is nonart.

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 history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

I was truly ignorant about art before the film.

I don't very much enjoy looking at paintings in general. I know too much about them. I take them apart.

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

My job is art curator, not artist. All I have ever wanted to do is immerse myself in art, to enjoy it, to learn about it, to write about it, to talk to others about it.

There's been too much attention on marketing. Can't we just talk about the paintings?

I am interested in the art. I'm a professional woman.

I have long been a fan and enthusiast where art is concerned.

Art needs to be socialised, and you need a lot of context to understand that, and that doesn't mean having read a few art history books.

Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting.

I think art was the one thing my high school didn't give. And I think that was probably one reason why I was interested in it.

I don't worry about whether anyone knows anything about art.