Alfred Stieglitz Quotes

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

The good photographer will produce a competent picture every time whatever his subject. But only when his subject makes and immediate and direct appeal to his own interests will he produce a work of distinction.

Bad art might be defined as a series of bad choices about what to show and what to leave out.

I would like beautiful gymnastics to be recognized as the best. I want the judges to appreciate things that are not necessarily winning points.

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

There must be some one quality without which a work of art cannot exist; possessing which, in the least degree, no work is altogether worthless.

If your choice enters into it, then taste is involved - bad taste, good taste, uninteresting taste. Taste is the enemy of art, A-R-T.

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.

A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable.

Sane judgment abhors nothing so much as a picture perpetrated with no technical knowledge, although with plenty of care and diligence.

I was an awful critic. I operated on the assumption that there was an absolute scale of values against which art could be measured. I didn't trust my own subjective responses.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

To have great designs is the privilege of great nations.

I abhor mere prettiness.

Photography is not a fine art at all.

If the standard for art is the decency of its creators, we're going to have a lot of empty museums.

I think in any work of art, there always will be randomness about what is good, what is bad.

Objective painting is not good painting unless it is good in the abstract sense.

Bad critics judge a work of art by comparing it to pre-existing theories. They always go wrong when confronted with a masterpiece because masterpieces make their own rules.

I’ve always assumed that the abstract qualities of [my] photographs are obvious. For instance, I can turn them upside down and they’re still interesting to me as pictures. If you turn a picture that’s not well organized upside down, it won’t work.

Expression, sentiment, truth to nature, are essential: but all those are not enough. I never care to look at a picture again, if it be ill composed; and if well composed I can hardly leave off looking at it.

Art is amoral; so is life. For me there are no obscene pictures or books; there are only poorly conceived and poorly executed ones.

The picture is good or not from the moment it was caught in the camera.

High kitsch, whatever else may be said of it, cannot be openly dismissed as cheap.