Walter Darby Bannard quotes:

Most 'profound truths' are just timely ideas.

If you learn something too well, it will get in the way of your perception of reality.

When anything goes, everything goes.

In art there is no absolute good or bad, but it is absolute that there is good and bad.

Too much freedom inhibits choice. Constructive narrowness clarifies choice.

No high-minded painter of the last fifty years has been able to come to terms with his art without coming to terms with the problem of cubism.

Art is like a butterfly fluttering in a meadow. Analysis of art is like a butterfly on a pin. Each has its value, but we must always be aware of the difference, and what is gained or lost.

To an art historian a Giotto is a 14th Century painting. To an artist it was painted yesterday. We free ourselves from the past when we see it freshly.

Big minds have big ideas. Small minds use big ideas to justify bad ideas.

Without the eye, the head is blind. Without the head, the eye is adrift.

What is sublime? / the artist said. / I haven't time / to be well read. / To be sub lime / I'll place, instead, / green citrus fruit / upon my head.

A clear idea about the nature of quality in art will always result in inferior art tailored to it.

Anything is OK in art if the art turns out OK.

Art flows more easily when you are not thinking about what 'should' be in it or how it 'should' be done. The Impressionists taught us to look and see, not assume.

Art is not 'about.' Art is.

Art rides in on pleasure.

Asking art to express ideas is like asking a Sumo wrestler to play charades.

Assumptions are usually presumptuous but often correct.

An ivory tower is a fine place as long as the door is open.

There is no best way to make art, but there are a lot of better ways.

Good art looks new because the artist has recombined something old to make something better.

A critic without a good eye is a eunuch in a harem.

Always let intuitive perception precede analysis.

Art is making something better without knowing what better is until you make it.

Art is not truth. Truth conforms to reality. Art invents reality.

Art is there for nourishment, not explication.

Art is too popular. If plumbing was as popular as art is we would have amateur plumbers running around brandishing wrenches and Roto-Rooters, climbing in and out of sewers and writing gibberish about pipe systems. And none of our our toilets would work.

Art makes you reinvent the wheel with regularity. If you don't, art gets bored and slips away.

Art may be for the privileged few but they have earned the privilege and deny it to no one.

Art that wants to be felt does not have the need to be admired.

Complete freedom debilitates art but reveals much about character.

Conceptual art' is an oxymoron. Concepts are articulations of fact or supposition, not attributes of quality.

Convention and restriction release inhibition and provoke the imagination.

Craft' gets a bad rap. Mediocre art is not caused by craft; it is caused by artists. Good art employs whatever craft works best.

Dogmatism spreads its roots in the fertile soil of uncertainty.

Don't apologize, justify or rationalize bad art or bad writing. If you do, you are part of it.

Don't burden art with words and ideas. Art comes from a deeper place.

Don't explain, enjoy.

Experience is real. Painting, which comes out of experience, is real. The world is an illusion.

Good art has everything you need to know about it in the work, not on a wall label. Art is here to take us beyond language.

Good art, no matter how simple or casual-seeming, always carries a high density of choice.

Good new art may not look like art. Inspiration doesn't follow style, it creates it.

Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past.

If art depended on content, then one painting of an apple would be as good as the next one.

If we see an object as a bowl, it may inhibit seeing it as craft, just as seeing it as craft might inhibit seeing it as art. See first; name later.

In ART as in Life the Best Way to REMEDY mistakes is to take advantage of them.

It matters little if something is 'craft' or 'art.' The question is only this: does it give me pleasure?

Limitation of means is a precondition of excellence. Creative freedom chooses its limitations. Destructive freedom rejects them heedlessly.

Live to paint, don't paint to live.

Making art is like swimming underwater in a blindfold.

Many years ago, Clement Greenberg said, 'All profoundly original work looks ugly at first.' This should be updated now to 'All profoundly ugly work looks original at first.

Most art is just surface noise.

Most people find facts irritating. Facts interfere with their systems of denial.

Nothing is as hopeless as trying to justify art in words.

Of course I will look at anything, but I have not got the time or the patience to keep on looking at art that I know could be better. I don't want art that needs fixing, I want art that sends me back to the studio to fix my own.

One needs to be right before getting righteous.

Originality is way overrated. To make, you need to take. All great artists do.

Part of history is facts. The other part is what we find easier to believe.

Postmodernism does not facilitate better art. It rationalizes inferior art by wrapping it in words - a suit of armor with nobody inside.

Postmodernism does not help us understand good art. It encourages art that can be easily understood and throws in something catchy to cover the loss of mystery.

Postmodernism is Modernism with Alzheimer's.

Postmodernism is silly and joyless at the same time.

Postmodernism lives in the academy, where words abandon reality to serve ambition, and reputations rise on hot air.

Power is like money. Some know how to get it; few know how to use it.

Purplish brown? Let's agree it / is a color so bad we all flee it / it has no good use / so let's name it Puce / from the sound we make when we see it.

Science is a matter of adjusting language to explain material reality. Art is a matter of adjusting material reality to create a sense of life.

Stale artifacts of the past' are always 'active components of the present moment' when they are experienced in the present moment.

Start a painting with fresh ideas, and then let the painting replace your ideas with its ideas.

Talent is like a seed which needs fertile soil. There is no less talent now, there is less fertile soil to nourish it.

The art consensus is not criteria, it is convenience.

The first duty of intelligence is to recognize the obvious.

The more freedom artists have to do what they want to do, the more they do what other artists are doing.

The power of art is not in communication but effect; what it does, not what it relates.

The struggle to be original hates conformity, but the struggle to be better disregards it, or takes advantage of it to build workable conventions.

There are too many artists, too many dealers and too much art.

There is no regional art. The only region left is the art magazine.

There's a big difference between grabbing attention and rewarding attention.

Truth is not always hard to find; it is often staring you in the face. The problem with truth is that it is hard to believe. It is even harder to get other people to believe.

Trying to be original is futile. If you have no place to go, stay home and cook.

Very few people ever understand art. If you are lucky, they will buy it for the wrong reasons.

We learn to lie by believing words rather than experience.

We must turn away from work that replaces experience and pleasure with explanation.

When anyone can produce dreck or publish gibberish, and not only get away with it but be celebrated for it, the discipline is no longer a discipline, and it will get no respect.

When anything can be art, art is not much of anything.

When art writing seems incomprehensible, chances are it is.

When good ideas get put to bad use, it is the fault of the user, not the idea.

When imitation goes over big, it isn't imitation, it is a trend.

When inspiration dies, imitation thrives.

When making a painting, only one thing counts: what you do next.

When realistic images or patterns are seen in an abstract painting, they are often parallels brought about by processes in painting which echo processes in nature.

When you are painting a landscape, assume the painting is real and the landscape is an illusion.

When you 'break all the barriers' you get a pile of rubble.

When you have made a good painting, don't do another like it, but remember the process, what you did, what you were thinking and feeling.

When you make the obvious mysterious, then the mysterious becomes unavailable.

When you write something new about science, other scientists may not like it but they pay attention because it is subject to proof. When you write something new about art, it is subject only to the reader's discomfort, and will probably be rejected.

Whether something is called art is beside the point. What counts is what happens when you ask it to actually be art.

Writing about art is only useful when it leads to the experience of art.

You don't have to be a cave man to appreciate Lascaux.