Peter Landesman Quotes

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

The Art Snob will stand back from a picture at some distance, his head cocked slightly to one side

You are just as qualified as any expert to make a judgment and have a feeling or a response to any work of art.

Just as the unmusical ear is not competent to judge music, so it is likewise with pictures, whether they are paintings, drawings or photos. Only a sensitive and trained eye gives us the right to judge.

I find relatively little relationship between the work of art and the immediate critical response it gets.

Being critical of art is a way of showing art respect.

I have generally found that persons who had studied painting least were the best judges of it.

Few people in contemporary art demonstrate much curiosity. The majority spend their days blathering on, rather than trying to work out why one artist is more interesting than another, or why one picture works and another doesn't.

It's absurd to talk about paintings that you haven't finished.

I look at my paintings for a very long time before letting them out of my studio. I like to get on the treadmill and look around at all of my paintings while I exercise. I try to stare them down to make them reveal their weaknesses. If they reveal weaknesses, they get repainted.

You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same.

I've always been very opinionated, for lack of a better term, about art. Not to sound too arrogant, but I guess I'm a connoisseur of telling people what I think is good and bad.

Every art critic and every writer doesn't have a frame to start off from. If I made a statement saying, "This is Abstract Expressionism," they could go, "Well, he failed miserably," or, "Fantastic, this is a new genius!" But in art history, I don't see any of the artists I like spewing bullshit. I don't see anyone recording it or pronouncing what they were doing.

Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings.

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art - it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.

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.

The function of criticism is the reeducation of perception of works of art? The conception that its business is to appraise, to judge in the legal and moral sense, arrests the perception of those who are influenced by the criticism that assumes this task.

Being critical of art is a way of showing art respect. No sports writer would say, "Well the Yankees had a great season this year." No food critic would get a bad meal and say, "Oh, it was so lovely." It always strikes me as odd when people say, "Why do you write negatively about any art?" I think that everybody has mixed feelings about everything - even Goya. I mean, I look at Rembrandt sometimes and I hear a voice in my head go, "It's pretty brown."

A good critic is the man who describes his adventures among masterpieces.

Critics of art are like eunuchs in harem. They see how it's done when the men come to see the women, but they can't do it themselves.

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

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

I cannot tell good art from bad art. I have no eye for it.

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

You open a section of 'The New York Times,' and there's a review or a story on a choreographer or a dancer, and there's an informative, clear image of a dancer. This is, in my view, not an interesting photograph.