Milan Kundera Quotes

I think we're much smarter than we were. Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it.

The huge problem in our society is the enormous ignorance of the ideas that underlie modern art.

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.

People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.

The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.

What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism.

I make pictures and someone comes in and calls it art.

I have trouble with modern art. But in general, all art forms fascinate me - art is the way human beings express what we can't say in words.

The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.

If art is any good, it has so much of a longer trajectory than one night. Contemporary art is separate from art openings. In the end, it depends on the strength of ideas in each piece.

Not all art is great; most of it's rubbish.

Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

I'm a huge art buff.

I thought conceptual art was a joke.

I don't like most contemporary art. But I think if you talked to any person who's heavily involved in contemporary art, they'd say the same thing. If you go to a biennale, you don't expect to like much of it.

The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.

If a nonartist teaches a subject called art, it is nonart.

I think of art as the highest level of creativity. To me, it is one of the greatest sources of enjoyment.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

I believe in art.

I have tons of art books. I have them all over the place. They are in my car, in my bag, and in my studio. There are books around me all the time.

In art, theories are as useful as a doctor's prescription; one must be sick to believe them.

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.