Jack Garratt Quotes

The pleasure of criticizing takes away from us the pleasure of being moved by some very fine things.

There are three classes of readers; some enjoy without judgment; others judge without enjoyment; and some there are who judge while they enjoy, and enjoy while they judge. The latter class reproduces the work of art on which it is engaged. Its numbers are very small.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

The exercise of criticism always destroys for a time our sensibility to beauty by leading us to regard the work in relation to certain laws of construction. The eye turns from the charms of nature to fix itself upon the servile dexterity of art.

One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Art is to be admired rather than explained. The jargon of these sculptors is beyond me. I do not precisely know why I admire a green granite, female, apparently pregnant monster with one eye going around a square corner.

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.

I get a great laugh from artists who ridicule the critics as parasites and artists manqués — sucha horrible joke. I can’t imagine a more perfect art form, a moreperfect career than criticism. I can’t imagine anything more valuableto do.

If the mystical lovers of the arts, who consider all criticism dissection and all dissection destruction of enjoyment, thought logically, an exclamation like "Goodness alive!" would be the best criticism of the most deserving work of art. There are critiques which say nothing but that, only they do so more extensively.

I will try to account for the degree of my aesthetic emotion. That, I conceive, is the function of the critic.

There are very few people who really appreciate my shows. People come to the show and they pay and they enjoy it, but I don't really think most people really understand what they've seen.

I seldom have my stuff up unless I'm testing it. If I'm worrying about a painting, I put it up and see if I detest it quickly or slowly. Otherwise I have things by other artists.

Theatre can be so patronising. So often, it's just proselytising for the theatre.

All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.

Critics have a job to do. I understand that. It's not just to criticize. They're trying to interpret art for the public.

I don't often go to curator or artist walk-throughs of exhibitions. For a critic, it feels like cheating. I want to see shows with my own eyes, making my own mistakes, viewing exhibitions the way most of their audience sees them.

If nobody comes to your shows, then it's modern dance. If everybody comes to your shows and no one likes it, is that ballet? I don't know.

There's a point where art is not subjective, and my example for that is Picasso. If you don't like Picasso, that's your problem.

The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

A play should give you something to think about. When I see a play and understand it the first time, then I know it can't be much good.

I am particularly interested in creating a relationship between ideas of reception in conceptual art and theater.

There isn't any art until some creature sees and consumes it. And has a reaction.

It's difficult to judge other actors, because as an actor you're looking at different things than what an audience is looking at.

There are so many reactions to art that make sense to me - but 'ick' means something.