Chris Ware Quotes

Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of 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.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

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.

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.

A primitive artist is an amateur whose work sells.

A great painting is a great painting.

If someone stands in front of one of my paintings and says, 'This is just a mess', the word 'just' is not so good, but 'mess' might be right. Why not a mess? If it makes you say, 'Wow, I've never seen anything like that', that's beautiful.

In fairness, I don't think that everyone understands what I say, but I think they understand part of it and part of what the issues are... Just the same way that people like a good painting, I think people really like understanding, knowing about the world.

For many artists and critics, beauty is a discredited idea. It denotes the saccharine sylvan scenes and cheesy melodies that appealed to Granny.

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

I'm not knocking conceptual art; it's another department, but it doesn't move me like painting.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

A first-rate soup is more creative than a second-rate painting.

What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

When we can't determine what is art - when you get to that point where we're not sure, that's the greatest likelihood that we're actually experiencing something great. But I think that's what the art world is most afraid of, because you lose that security. Then we don't know how to assign evaluation, whether it's cultural or otherwise.

I have never collected an object or figure from Africa or Oceania because of anything curious about it or because of its utility or historic interest. Everything has been chosen entirely because of its aesthetic significance; its form, feeling, structure, and plastic values.

People go to see beautiful paintings to see how much they cost. Wow. The practical value is that it shows you what the human spirit can do.

Art doesn't interest me. Only artists interest me.

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.

Paintings are like a beer, only beer tastes good and it's hard to stop drinking beer.