Victoria Coren Mitchell Quotes

I enjoy looking, learning, smiling, and engaging with art, sometimes even rejecting it.

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

I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week, and no matter what kind of mood I'm in, no matter how bad the art is, I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good.

I am always rethinking how art is perceived and received, questioning our relationship to art. That's always been a constant.

We have no other means of recognising a work of art than our feeling for it.

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.

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

I can't believe that 100% of the people who stand in art galleries looking at art are thinking, 'Well, here I am, looking at art.' They must be having some sort of other, unselfconscious experience.

A lot of people are intimated by art, but it's something to be revered beyond criticism.

I believe that an art exhibition can be engaging, fun and deeply intellectually satisfying and serious. These are not contradictory concepts in art.

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

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

It's hard to explain your emotions when you see a work of art.

Art should be serious, not a joke. I don't like to laugh about art.

All sensitive people agree that there is a peculiar emotion provoked by works of art.

You're going to react to a painting in a way that the painting demands you react.

People look at film in a gallery, and if they walk out after two minutes they know they haven't seen the whole work. But then people look at a painting for two minutes and think they've seen it. Certain paintings are made to be consumed fast. But some require a slowed-down time. You have to go back to them.

I believe people can have a profound experience by being surrounded by something beautiful - that's what I aim for. My sculpture is about the way you feel when you're standing under it and inside it. It's experiential art.

A strong work of art really leaves people speechless. They feel a little angry because they don't understand it.

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

What I look for when I see a piece of art for the first time is some kind of emotional, intellectual experience, that's a combination of both of those things and is informed by my knowledge and something new that I see the artist doing.

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

People go into a gallery, and they're afraid to express their opinions about art. No one's afraid to say, 'Keanu Reeves was bad in that movie.' We see so many films that we can tell who's faking it. But with art, we can't always tell.

My whole career I've been interested by the distinction between an emotional and an intellectual response to an artwork.