Camille Paglia Quotes

As I see it, all of them - Tachists, Action Painters, Informel artists, and the rest - are only part of an Informel movement that covers a lot of other things as well. I think there's an Informel element in Beuys, as well; but it all began with Duchamp and chance, or with Mondrian, or with the Impressionists. The Informel is the opposite of the constructional quality of classicism - the age of kings, or clearly formed hierarchies.

I think media are at their most interesting before anybody's thought of calling them art, when people still think they're just a load of junk.

When critics or people judge, I think it's harder to make a commercial, pop movie than it is to make a pretentious art film. It's harder to reach millions of people and satisfy them and make them happy. These films kind of get ghettoized, this genre because there are so many big, big movies that are such big hits, but aren't any good. The audiences, they're not judging the style of the director, or the execution of the film. They're just looking to be entertained. They want to escape from their reality, and that's why we make movies, to get people to escape from the realities.

That was a piece I did in 1963 with Konrad Lueg in a department store, in the furniture department. It was announced in some papers as an exhibition opening, but the people who came didn't know that it was to be a sort of Happening. I don't think it is quite right that it has become so famous anyhow. It was just a lot of fun, and the word itself, Capitalist Realism, hit just right. But it wasn't such a big deal.

It's not like I think my art is inspirations from icons strung together. They're just sort of people who others talk about. I am definitely interested in the masters of different genres, they're talented and popular for a reason.

We use the term pop in the art world, as in Pop Art, but we forget that its root is popular - popular culture.

I don't think hip-hop is a dying art form. I think it's impossible for hip-hop to be a dying art form.

To me, movies are valuable as an art form and as a wonderful means of popular entertainment. But I think movies have gone terribly wrong.

I think in daily newspapers, the way comic strips are treated, it's as if newspaper publishers are going out of their way to kill the medium. They're printing the comics so small that most strips are just talking heads, and if you look back at the glory days of comic strips, you can see that they were showcases for some of the best pop art ever to come out.

Many of the left thinkers that really matter to me - that formed a big part of my thinking about politics and art - emphasize how capitalism is a totality, how there's no escape from it, no outside.

If you're starting to lose your faith in the general intelligence of the American populous, there's nothing like them mistaking pop culture for Van Gogh as a sign that people still read their history books and care about art.

Erudite and entertaining, Max Anderson is the perfect tour guide to the world of art. The Quality Instinct is both educational and enlightening from start to finish, the thinking person's guide to museums. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to truly understand what makes a masterpiece.

... the novel, as a living force, if not as a work of art, owes an incalculable debt to what we call, mistakenly, the new psychology, to Freud, in his earlier interpretations, and more truly, I think, to Jung.

I would say that deconstruction is affirmation rather than questioning, in a sense which is not positive: I would distinguish between the positive, or positions, and affirmations. I think that deconstruction is affirmative rather than questioning: this affirmation goes through some radical questioning, but it is not questioning in the field of analysis.

Antique art has come down to us in a fragmentary condition, and we have virtuously adapted our taste to this necessity. Almost all our favorite specimens of Greek sculpture, from the sixth century onward, were originally parts of compositions, and if we were faced with the complete group in which the Charioteer of Delphi was once a subsidiary figure, we might well experience a moment of revulsion. We have come to think of the fragment as more vivid, more concentrated, and more authentic.

I think that an obsession with art history gave rise to the work.

We like to think of industrialization as being despicable. I don't really know what to make of it. There’s something terribly brittle about it. I suppose I would still prefer to sit under a tree with a picnic basket rather than under a gas pump, but signs and comic strips are interesting as subject matter. There are certain things that are usable, forceful, and vital about commercial art. We're using those things – but we're not really advocating stupidity, international teenagerism, and terrorism.

I would love to collect art at some point, but I think the whole rap/art world thing is getting kind of corny.

I don't think rock n' roll songwriters should worry about art. I don't think it comes into it...as far as I'm concerned, Art is just short for Arthur.

What I think is the universal, wonderful thing about music, is that it's very inclusive.

It's art that's taught me to think and to write.

I think an artist is anybody who does something well, like if you cook well.

I start a picture and I finish it. I don't think about art while I work. I try to think about life.

don’t write out of what I know; I write out of what I wonder. I think most artists create art in order to explore, not to give the answers. Poetry and art are not about answers to me; they are about questions.