Russell Lynes Quotes

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

One way to test a picture's integrity is to turn it upside down - a technique used not only by connoisseurs but also by artists trying to see their work with a fresh eye.

I don't pretend to know anything about art. I make pictures for entertainment, and then the professors tell me what they mean.

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.

The Art Snob can be recognized in the home by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls, quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. This is followed either by complete and pained silence or a comment such as 'That's really a very pleasant little water color you have there.

Art critic! Is that a profession? When I think we are stupid enough, we painters, to solicit those people's compliments and to put ourselves into their hands! What shame! Should we even accept that they talk about our work?

If art is to have a special train, the critic must keep some seats reserved on it.

Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance.

People go into a gallery, and they're afraid to express their opinions about art. No one's afraid to say, 'Keanu Reeves was bad in that movie.' We see so many films that we can tell who's faking it. But with art, we can't always tell.

Everybody's an art critic.

This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!

Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works.

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.

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.

Absolute catholicity of taste is not without its dangers. It is only an auctioneer who should admire all schools of art.

Unless you are a born connoisseur of art, you will not be able to judge by yourself why certain art is superior to other art.

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