Everyone discusses my art and pretends to understand, as if it were necessary to understand, when it is simply necessary to love.
Artwork operates on two different levels: On one level, there's artwork as a mode of expressivity, and then there's the other side, where the image is a construction that is meant to engage in a discursive field in order to perform a particular function.
Of all the biennials, triennials, quadrennials, internationals, and massive group shows, Documenta, established in 1955 and held once every five years in Kassel, Germany, is seen as the most serious. A statement show.
Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity.
Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.
When I was in school, they say everybody can do art. And I was, like, a little bit obstinate - not an anarchist, but I was always asking questions. I said, 'Isn't art supposed to be difficult?' If we can all do art, then it's not really art. It's supposed to be difficult.
I am all for art's finding a large audience. But the way that's happening now, with big works filling big galleries and bigger shows, is mostly stopping statements from being made. Or heard. Or talked about. Or really examined. It's watering things down.
Art is interesting because there can be so many different perspectives in a piece of art. The way I see it may be completely different than the way somebody else sees it. It's interesting to hear what somebody sees in a piece of art compared to somebody else. It could be completely different, and that's interesting to me.
There's no being wrong in seeing something in art, only being disagreed with.
Men talk about art, and artists make art, but should artists talk?
What is needed in the theater, in fact for all our art forms, is a vibrant critical tradition.
Yes, 85 percent of the art you see isn't any good. But everyone has a different opinion about which 85 percent is bad. That in turn creates fantastically unstable interplay and argument.
As an artist, I've always wanted to participate in the dialogue of art with other artists.
I don't often go to curator or artist walk-throughs of exhibitions. For a critic, it feels like cheating. I want to see shows with my own eyes, making my own mistakes, viewing exhibitions the way most of their audience sees them.
I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!
I'm an artist, and I like art that gets people talking, good or bad. Criticism is good, too.
Are we, as humans, gaining any insight on how to talk about ourselves and how something as abstract as a Charlie Parker record gets us into a dialogue about our emotions and our thoughts? Sometimes we lose sight that the music has a wider context. So I want to continue those dialogues. Those are the things I want to foster.
Good art theory must smell of the studio, although its language should differ from the household talk of painters and sculptors.
It's really interesting with art-movies too, but art especially - to see how your attitude toward artists and works and your level of appreciation of them is always shifting and changing over the years.
Have you ever noticed how most critics disagree with the public? That should tell you a lot about critics.
Great art speaks a language which every intelligent person can understand. The people who call themselves modernists today speak a different language.
I have spent a lot of time in the art world, and I guess I do listen to how people speak. I'm interested in what they say and how they say it.
To me, the more dialogue amongst creative types, the better. It keeps people on their toes, and competition is healthy.
It is from the womb of art that criticism was born.
All the world is competent to judge my pictures except those who are of my profession.
