Dave Barry Quotes

The art world is never going to be popular like the NFL, but more people are buying art and I think that's cushioning, to a great extent, our art-market cycles.

Soccer is an art more central to our culture than anything the Arts Council deigns to recognize.

The problem with a popular art form is that those who want something more are in a hopeless minority compared with the millions who are always seeing it for the first time, or for the reassurance and gratification of seeing the conventions fulfilled again.

We have found a way to bring to millions of people an art that they can understand.

The minute we don't finance the arts, the accountants, attorneys and politicians keep taking the cream of money off the top and it doesn't trickle down unless all of society understands that we must support the arts, whether it's ballet, opera, fashion. Fashion is like opera, is like ballet, is like theatre. It's a visual theatre.

In a popular medium, you're going to get loads of stuff that is trite, but there'll also be some really special moments.

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

Rock & roll is not obscure, it's really easy to understand. So is my painting.

Well, the stuff that has become more commercial doesn't have any edge.

The art world is molting - some would say melting. Galleries are closing; museums are scaling back.

There is a small world of people who are very interested in contemporary art and a slightly bigger world of people who look at contemporary art. But then there is a much larger world that doesn't realise how influential art is on things that they actually look at.

I can find no inner peace until the masses can see my work.

One of the questions that has most bothered me in my reflections on culture is the question of kitsch. Just what is it? When did it begin? And why?

I like the elitism of the art world. I think art for the people is a terrible idea.

My introduction to art history was like everybody else's. You see an art history book that has works by Rembrandt and Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. Yes, these things are great. But I don't see a reflection of myself in any of these things I'm looking at.

When critics or people judge, I think it's harder to make a commercial, pop movie than it is to make a pretentious art film. It's harder to reach millions of people and satisfy them and make them happy. These films kind of get ghettoized, this genre because there are so many big, big movies that are such big hits, but aren't any good. The audiences, they're not judging the style of the director, or the execution of the film. They're just looking to be entertained. They want to escape from their reality, and that's why we make movies, to get people to escape from the realities.

Kitsch is certainly not "bad art," it forms its own closed system.

Like it or not, people tend to buy paintings to match their drapes, couch or carpet. I know you want them to be so overwhelmed with your skills they can't resist hauling your art home. These three factors are what dictate most art sales.

Great art is horseshit, buy tacos.

I'd mortgage any house for art.

You can only make art that talks to the masses when you have nothing to say to them.

Collectors are paying for our education by purchasing our art.

Like many members of the uncultured, Cheez-It consuming public, I am not good at grasping modern art.

Art should communicate with as many people as possible.

The ordinary bloke will not voluntarily pay for "art" that leaves him unmoved--if he does pay for it, the money has to be conned out of him, by taxes and such.