Walter Annenberg Quotes

Whenever I buy a painting, someone invariably says, "Oh, what a great investment." And I hate that reaction. To me, it's a matter of love and not an exchange of equity.

Modern art, in particular, seems especially vulnerable to fraud. Its abstractions are sometimes difficult to understand or grasp, and a modern painting is often loved less because of its intrinsic quality - its beauty, as conventionally understood - than because of the identity of the painter, its mark of social status.

What do I ask of a painting? I ask it to astonish, disturb, seduce, convince.

Paintings can make you cry and it's just **colored dirt**.

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.

What is important, then, is not that the critic should possess a correct abstract definition of beauty for the intellect, but a certain kind of temperament, the power of being deeply moved by the presence of beautiful objects.

I have some beautiful 20th-century drawings and a few paintings, but I'm not a collector, and I'm not particularly attached to objects.

I really just started buying art as a passion. I never considered it an investment, but it ended up being a good investment.

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

Artists need a lot of collectors, all kinds of collectors, buying their art.

Art collectors are pretty insignificant in the scheme of things. What matters and survives is the art. I buy art that I like. I buy it to show it off in exhibitions. Then, if I feel like it, I sell it and buy more art.

I collect a lot of art.

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

I don't know a single collector or museum director who says: 'Oh, he's on a list, so I think I'll buy something of his.' The people who buy my art put a little more thought into it than that.

By the time I discovered Chicano painters in the mid-'80s, I recognized that these guys were really world-class painters, but they weren't getting any attention, which was good in one sense in that I could get their work for cheaper!

I love the work of Matisse and Picasso, but I don't have enough millions to own one. And I don't really believe in owning art, anyway.

I buy some art but I don't like to talk about it.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

I love painters because I don't paint, so I get to enjoy art; I like collecting paintings.

Art is a process of delivering or arranging elements that appeal to the emotions of a person looking at it. It's what you feel.

Even if you can't afford to buy a painting, you can experience it. You can go see the Mona Lisa and be transported. You can see the discipline and suffering in a van Gogh.

I love art, but I've never bought an artwork or even considered it.

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

One way I judge music is whether it compels me to listen to it.

The test of a work of art is, in the end, our affection for it, not our ability to explain why it is good.