Art Hierarchy Quotes

All photographs are far more important than any painting.

Sculpture and painting are very justly called liberal arts; a lively and strong imagination, together with a just observation, being absolutely necessary to excel in either; which, in my opinion, is by no means the case of music, though called a liberal art, and now in Italy placed even above the other two--a proof of the decline of that country.

I'm delighted with it, because it used to be that films were the lowest form of art. Now we've got something to look down on.

The feat of superbly imitating a muscle, as Michelangelo did, or a face, as Raphael did, created neither progress nor a hierarchy in art. Because these artists of the sixteenth century imitated human forms, they were not superior to the artists of the high periods of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indochinese, Roman, and Gothic art who interpreted and stylized form but did not imitate it.

Dance is low on the totem pole of the arts, because you're not left with a painting... a book that will stay there, a score you can read.

I had the impression in art school that cartooning was thought of as a lesser art than painting because cartoons are reproduced, so the "work" is not the single thing like a painting, but instead is the reproduced image.

Wall-to-wall masterpieces, after all, ought to be preferred to wall-to-wall decorative arts, even if the decorative arts are of the highest quality peppered and salted with dukes and tiaras.

Children's finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn't.

Whether a watercolor is inferior to an oil [painting], or whether a drawing, an etching, or a photograph is not as important as either, is inconsequent. To have to despise something in order to respect something else is a sign of impotence.

Art is for the elite because it has a very high price-point of entry. And when one is in that social strata, they look down at illustrators because they just draw things directly for a few hundred dollars, and that's seen as being a bit grubby. Galleries allow artists to stay relatively divorced from the financial aspects of their trade.

I don't think there should be a hierarchy of what is valid in the arts.

In the traditional Islamic world, the hierarchy of the arts was not based on whether they were "fine" or "industrial" or "minor". It was based upon the effect of art on the soul of the human being.

I think that high art reposes on popular art, without one there cannot be another.