Jacques Barzun Quotes

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.

The greatness of art is not to find what is common but what is unique.

Such discussions help us very little to enjoy what has been well done in art or poetry, to discriminate between what is more and what is less excellent in them, or to use words like beauty, excellence, art, poetry, with a more precise meaning than they would otherwise have.

Works of art, in my opinion, are the only objects in the material universe to possess internal order, and that is why, though I don't believe that only art matters, I do believe in Art for Art's sake.

Art has never been a popularity contest.

I don't have any particular wish to be polemical or didactic; I don't have a 'message', but what I do thoroughly enjoy are those works of art, not necessarily in the cinema, but in the other arts as well, which have an encyclopaedic world.

Publishers, theatrical managers, and critics ask not for the quality inherent in creative art, but will it meet with a good sale, will it suit the palate of the people? Alas, this palate is like a dumping ground; it relishes anything that needs no mental mastication. As a result, the mediocre, the ordinary, the commonplace represents the chief literary output.

I think that a lot of artists have succeeded in making what I might call "curator's art." Everybody's being accepted, and I always want to say, "Really? That's what you've come for? To make art that looks a lot like somebody else's art?" If I am thinking of somebody else's art in front of your art, that's a problem.

I get a great laugh from artists who ridicule the critics as parasites and artists manqués — sucha horrible joke. I can’t imagine a more perfect art form, a moreperfect career than criticism. I can’t imagine anything more valuableto do.

If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe

If an Artist love his Art for its own sake, he will delight in excellence wherever he meets it, as well in the work of another as in his own.

In a sense, the first (if not necessarily the prime) function of a novelist, of ANY artist, is to entertain. If the poem, painting, play or novel does not immediately engage one's surface interest then it has failed. Whatever else it may or may not be, art is also entertainment. Bad art fails to entertain. Good art does something in addition.

Of all the arts poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and will least be guided by precept or example) maintains the first rank.

Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. 'We the people' affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art.

In our time there are many artists who do something because it is new; they see their value and their justification in this newness. They are deceiving themselves; novelty is seldom the essential. This has to do with one thing only; making a subject better from its intrinsic nature.

A good piece of art raises questions.

Art is great only when it bears the stamp of the individual.

The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely. All art is quite useless.

I think for me, any great art is art which communicates human emotion.

In truth, the legitimate contention is, not of one age or school of literary art against another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to form.

I didn't become a commercially successful artist by design, and actually I think that commercially successful just means, if you analyse it, that a lot of people like you. It's become a dirty word, and I don't necessarily think it needs to be.

Be subtle, various, ornamental, clever, And do not listen to those critics ever Whose crude provincial gullets crave in books Plain cooking made still plainer by plain cooks.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

The first impression and a natural one is, that the fine arts have risen or declined in proportion as patronage has been given to them or withdrawn, but it will be found that there has often been more money lavished on them in their worst periods than in their best, and that the highest honours have frequently been bestowed on artists whose names are scarcely now known.