Camille Paglia Quotes

None of the arts are any good unless you really are great at them.

An artist who brings to his work a mind tolerably furnished with the general principles of art, and a taste formed upon the works of good artists – in short, who knows in what excellence consists - will, with the assistance of models... be an overmatch for the greatest painter that ever lived who should be debarred such advantages.

Greatness in art is always a by-product.

Great art is never perfect; perfect art is never great.

A small artist is content with art; a great artist is content with nothing except everything.

Beerbohm was a genius of the purest kind. He stands at the summit of his art.

In art, at a certain level, there is no 'better than.' It's just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

It's great to listen to men talk about sports or fights or war or even hunting sometimes, but the presence of the other, the presence of art and beauty, which crude masculinity seems to discount, is essential. Real civilization and real manhood seem to me to include those.

When the legends die, the dreams end; there is no more greatness

I think of myself as someone who's trying to be a great songwriter and a great performer. And I mean really great.

Bad artists always admire each other's work. They call it being large-minded and free from prejudice. But a truly great artist cannot conceive of life being shown, or beauty fashioned, under any conditions other than those he has selected.

There is in reality no such thing as modern art. Art is carried on up and down in immense cycles through centuries and civilizations.

He who excels in his art so as to carry it to the utmost height of perfection of which it is capable may be said in some measure to go beyond it: his transcendent productions admit of no appellations.

Remember always, in painting as in eloquence, the greater your strength, the quieter will be your manner, and the fewer your words; and in painting, as in all the arts and acts of life the secret of high success will be found, not in a fretful and various excellence, but in a quiet singleness of justly chosen aim.

To be great, art has to point somewhere.

No art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it.

My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been to become Picasso or greater.

Excellence in art is largely the result of attention to minutiae, and--prayer.

The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.

During the Renaissance, women were not allowed to attend art school. Everyone asks, where are the great women painters of the Renaissance?

Great art... is the result of the labours of thousands of faithful craftsmen who know that they are doomed to remain for ever outside the gates of the Paradise of Perfection, but who nevertheless will give the very best there is in them because the work they do means more to them than anything else in this world.

To interest is the first duty of art; no other excellences will ever begin to compensate for failure in this.

The excellence of every art, must consist in the complete accomplishment of its purpose

Museums are important. Design and art schools are important because they show how it should be done at the highest level of quality. Once people are exposed to quality, they recognize it right away and they appreciate it. People's tastes are changed by exposure to quality. Unless they can see it they can't want it. That's the brilliance of Apple - they provide quality in design.

Genius is supposed to be a power of producing excellences which are put of the reach of the rules of art: a power which no precepts can teach, and which no industry can acquire.