Artistic Discernment Quotes

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

It is a gratification to me to know that I am ignorant of art... Because people who understand art find nothing in pictures but blemishes.

If they who understand the utmost refinement of any art will enjoy the perfection of it in a manner superior to other men, will they not amply pay for that advantage in feeling more than other men the imperfection of it, which in the natural course of things must so much oftener fall in their way?

I'm so impressed by Jennifer Lawrence and Carey Mulligan. They have this exquisite taste. They are very gifted in their ability to make great choices.

If I'm writing the music, and I don't feel like its really connecting inside, then I'll know there's no reason to really put a lyric on it; it's a waste, and I'll throw it.

The most important thing in art is taste.

The man who has honesty, integrity, the love of inquiry, the desire to see beyond, is ready to appreciate good art.

It's hard for me to find people to paint. There has got to be something about them that only I can see.

A lot of people who curate in the business, and curate the art, don't really have good artistic sense. They may know commerce, but they aren't savvy enough to know how to balance commerce and art, you know? They don't know how to satisfy both palates.

A high-brow is someone who looks at a sausage and thinks of Picasso.

Art is the elimination of the unnecessary.

It's highly dishonorable to ever quit a production. I never have done it, and I can't imagine ever doing it. However, I have been in productions before where, on the first in the read-through, you feel that someone is in trouble, and indeed, actors have been let go shortly after read-throughs. I've seen that happen before.

One of my side strange abilities is to hear a good song, no matter how it's being performed. Even if you get a bad performance, I can still hear that there's a good song.

I've always been very opinionated, for lack of a better term, about art. Not to sound too arrogant, but I guess I'm a connoisseur of telling people what I think is good and bad.

Critics? Don't talk to me of critics! You think some jackanapes journalist, his soul eaten away by the maggots of jealousy and failure, has anything worthwhile to say of art? I don't.

The connoisseur of art must be able to appreciate what is simply beautiful, but the common run of people is satisfied with ornament.

I don’t know much about the arts, so I’m going to keep my cotton-picking hands off and let you people take care of it.

I don't think I've got bad taste. I've got no taste.

Nobody is fully alive who cannot apply to art as much discrimination and appreciation as he applies to the work by which he earns his living.

In my vocabulary there are two bad words: art and good taste.

A man that has a taste of music, painting, or architecture, is like one that has another sense, when compared with such as have no relish of those arts

At times it has been doubtful to me if Emerson really knows or feels what Poetry is at its highest, as in the Bible, for instance, or Homer or Shakspeare. I see he covertly or plainly likes best superb verbal polish, or something old or odd

At the core, every artist, no matter what his subject matter happens to be, has to be someone doing the looking. I began to really interrogate the act of looking.

An aesthetically informed Congress might be able to make better laws.

I always like to talk about how important space is. Art is in the spaces. Anybody can sing a note; it takes an artist to sing the spaces. Anybody can paint a brushstroke; it takes an artist to know when not to put the brushstroke.