Pauline Kael Quotes

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

The things I want to make into a film, they're personal, esoteric things, and I don't expect anyone else to like them as much as I do. I generally like my films more than anybody else will.

I know what I like—I like art—and I like what I know.

One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best.

I am biased to my show as a whole but it is still very entertaining.

I personally don't care for abstract art. I have always felt, 'To each his own.' There's art out there for everybody.

I usually like whatever I've recently finished best.

No one's conception of art is going to be acceptable to everybody.

I turned down some movies that were quite good. mainly on the basis of taste.

You either like something, or you don't; you won't change your opinion because somebody explains why you should like it.

I'm glad I made a piece of art that can be interpreted so widely. Art is always interpreted subjectively.

Every time we do anything artistic, the way it's perceived is always going to be different from the way that we had intended it to be because it's subjective.

Theater is certainly - is my first love, if I had to pick.

It's not what you see that is art. Art is the gap.

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

Contemplating a purported work of art is a social activity. Either you have a rewarding time, or you don't. You don't have to say why afterward. You don't have to say anything.

It's always dangerous to prescribe an idea on other people. I think people's interactions with art are their own, and will be far more interesting and sophisticated than anything that I could come up with.

I don't really see art as structured by logic.

There is always a subjective aspect in landscape art, something in the picture that tells us as much about who is behind the camera as about what is in front of it.

I liked working in advertising, but don't believe my taste in art, such as it is, was entirely formed by TV commercials. And I don't feel especially conflicted enjoying a Mantegna one day, a Carl Andre the next day and a brash student work the next.

I don't know what Art is but I know some things it isn't when I see them.

The only problem in art is to achieve a balance between the subjective and the objective.

Nothing, of course, will ever take the place of the good old fashion of 'liking' a work of art or not liking it; the more improved criticism will not abolish that primitive, that ultimate, test.

I would simply ask why so many critics, so many writers, so many philosophers take such satisfaction in professing that the experience of a work of art is ineffable, that it escapes by definition all rational understanding; why are they so eager to concede without a struggle the defeat of knowledge; and where does their irrepressible need to belittle rational understanding come from, this rage to affirm the irreducibility of the work of art, or, to use a more suitable word, its transcendence.

The paintings of Francis Bacon to my eye are very beautiful. The paintings of Bosch or Goya are to my eye very beautiful. I've also stood in front of those same paintings with people who've said, 'let's get on to the Botticellis as soon as possible.' I have lingered, of course.