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

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.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

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

Buying art is not understanding art.

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.

Does any art have a practical value? People love to talk about how expensive a painting is. That's the only way we can talk about paintings in this century.

Art! Who comprehends her? With whom can one consult concerning this great goddess?

I like a lot of modern art. I like Chuck Close a lot. It doesn't necessarily directly influence the work I draw on the page.

The older painting - well, it does have an effect all at once, I suppose, but it's of a lesser intensity than a lot of the American work in the last ten or fifteen years.

You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.

Art needs to be socialised, and you need a lot of context to understand that, and that doesn't mean having read a few art history books.

Once people have seen four or five Henry Moores, they will have a sense of great art.

Frankly, these days, without a theory to go with it, I can't see a painting.

I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor's-new-clothes sort of way. I think that's not right and that it's just because they don't understand the discourse.

Art is often defined as a famous masterpiece in a gallery, and we are meant to visit the work and view it to appreciate it. But that is not all there is.

Willem de Kooning paintings are a language to be learned. When they were first shown, they were ridiculed as being just drips and splatters and splashes. You had to learn how to read them.

It would be most wholesome if for at least twenty years art historians were forbidden to refer to any derivations. If they were not allowed to account for a work of art mainly by tracing where it comes from, they would have to deal with it in and by itself--which is what they are most needed for.

I have to assume that everybody interprets a piece of art they're exposed to as if it's already perfect in its wholeness, without knowing any backstory.

My dark little secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art.

It's clever, but is it Art?

It used to be that if you stood in front of a painting you didn't understand, you'd have some obligation to guess. Now you don't.

When works of art are presented like rare butterflies on the walls, they're decontextualized. We admire their beauty, and I have nothing against that, per se. But there is more to art than that.

To me, nothing in the art world is neutral. The idea of 'disinterest' strikes me as boring, dishonest, dubious, and uninteresting.