Roz Chast Quotes

People understand what art is supposed to look like, and so it's easy to make something that looks like art but isn't - especially in an abstract form.

You can't just take an image and randomly distort it and call it art - although many people in La Jolla where I come from do precisely that.

The problem with art is, it's not like the game of golf where you put the ball in the hole. There's no umpire; there's no judge. There are no rules. It's one of its problems. But it's also one of the great things about art. It becomes a question of what lasts.

What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way that a bad emotion is still an emotion.

A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward; it may be any one of an infinite number of concepts, none of which may have any possible bearing upon its degree of newness.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

I think it was Roger Fry who first coined what he took to be a final definition of a work of art, whether it was a painting, building, poem or Hepplewhite chair. He said that the best works of art are finished products that preserve 'a valuable state of mind'.

Well, why is this art? Why isn't that art?

You know what ART stands for? Above Real Truth.

Filling a space in a beautiful way - that is what art means to me.

Everything an artist spits is art.

I think "artistic" simply means there's more of the creator in the thing. Whether it's painting or song or movie or game, the creator puts more of themselves into the piece, so when the audience see it, they feel something real, they feel something human, they feel something that's like a person.

Art you can flush down the loo means nothing to me, even were the loo to be selected by Marcel Duchamp

It's in our nature. If you are a plumber, there is an objective way to establish whether you put together a great piping system or not. Art is a bit more slippery than that. So, when you fill a gallery with dirt and someone comes along waving wads of bills, it's difficult not to take them because they become a tangible acknowledgement that what you've been doing actually makes sense.

A work of art, so far as it is a work of art, cannot - whatever the artist's personal intention - advocate anything at all.

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

I do not know what evil is when it comes to art. I only know what is good art and what is bad art.

...if I can do it, it's not art.

The moment you cheat for the sake of beauty, you know you're an artist.

I want that every piece of art be honest, never mind what it is about.

If you cannot learn to love real art, at least learn to hate sham art and reject it.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

When art is defined by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, you've got a society that's impoverished.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.