Gavin Hood Quotes

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

If our music survives, which I have no doubt it will, then it will because it is good.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.

Mapplethorpe presented the body as a sexual object, separating it from the humanity of the person. He added nothing to photography as a medium. I hold his work in low regard.

He is the greatest artist who has embodied, in the sum of his works, the greatest number of the greatest ideas.

Great songs stand out wherever they're from.

At the time that they were shown, the Brillo Boxes were underappreciated. It's only now, with the patina of history, that we can really see these masterpieces in a clear light.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

If I were not able to separate the art from the artists, I think I would limit myself a great deal, and life wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

I don't think there's any formula for what makes great art.

No matter how hard I tried to popularize, I never cheapened a great work of art.

On one level, of course, the notion of judging films or books or music against each other is completely ridiculous. Who's to say '12 Years A Slave' is a better film than 'The Wolf of Wall Street'? Or that one album in a certain genre is better than another in a completely different genre?

Great music is great music. It doesn't matter what genre it belongs.

A lot of bad music sells a million copies; I don't think it's a good litmus test for whether things are going well.

I think we have the wrong notion of commercial and intellectual or artistic film. Because all films are commercial.

I really appreciate anyone trying to inject art into mainstream film.

Time extracts various values from a painter's work. When these values are exhausted the pictures are forgotten, and the more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

Great art is never produced for its own sake. It is too difficult to be worth the effort.

Art isn't held with the same high regard as it is after success. In any country, in any language, you're a loser if you're making music until you prove otherwise.

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

A great painting is a great painting.

Every great work makes the human face more admirable and richer, and that is its whole secret.

Against expectations I was charmed by Gehry's Edgemar development, which housed the Santa Monica Museum of Art, and positively awed by the Bilbao Guggenheim. That Gehry is a great artist I have no doubt, but talent and determination are no warrant against confusion, nor are they a guaranty to produce great art.

Observe that it is a great error to believe that all mediums of art are not closely tied to their time.