Art criticism quotes:

Send

In literary and art criticism there are two criteria, the political and the artistic. -- Mao Zedong
Abandoned by philosophy, politics, and sociology, historical determinism continues to hold out in formalist art criticism. -- Harold Rosenberg
With art criticism it's difficult to discuss beauty, to assess it, because there's always the possibility that we're insane. -- Peter Schjeldahl
I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. Hes very original, very accurate and acute. -- Helen Vendler
I like art history and art criticism. Leo Steinberg has always been my favorite. He's very original, very accurate and acute. -- Helen Vendler
In certain kinds of writing, particularly in art criticism and literary criticism, it is normal to come across long passages which are almost completely lacking in meaning. -- George Orwell
Perhaps art criticism cannot be reformed in a logical sense because it was never well-formed in the first place. Art criticism has long been a mongrel among academic pursuits, borrowing whatever it needed from other fields... -- James Elkins
In one dancing saloon I saw the only rational method of art criticism I have ever come across. Over the piano was printed a notice: 'Please do not shoot the pianist. He is doing his best.' -- Oscar Wilde
In the visual arts, for example, the semiological approach to graphics provides a rigorous analysis of the visual means used by the artist. It defines the basic properties and laws governing the arts and suggests objective criteria for art criticism. -- Jacques Bertin
I think what's happened in art criticism, or art thinking, in last 30 or 40 years is a confusion between the "what" - the subject - and the "how." Most attention goes to the "what," but it's the "how" that's the important part - how something is brought into being. -- Joe Bradley
Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value. -- George Jean Nathan
It is from the womb of art that criticism was born. -- Charles Baudelaire
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art. -- Harry S Truman
What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism. -- Octavio Paz
Music is art, and once you become an artist, you need to learn how to accept criticism. -- Yanni
All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science. -- Leslie Fiedler
The art of the critic in a nutshell: to coin slogans without betraying ideas. The slogans of an inadequate criticism peddle ideas to fashion. -- Walter Benjamin
Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen. -- George Jean Nathan
I don't know very many people in the art world, only socialise with the few I like, and have little time to gnaw my nails with anxiety about any criticism I hear about. -- Charles Saatchi
I dislike literary jargon and never use it. Criticism has only one function and that is to help readers read and understand literature. It is not a science, it is an aid to art. -- Anne Stevenson
Instead of books, art, theatre, and music being consigned to specialized niches, we might have a criticism that better reflects the eclecticism of our time, a criticism that takes in various arts all at once. -- Lee Siegel
Behind the criticism of fashion as an artistic medium is a highly ideological prejudice: against markets, against consumers, against the dynamism of Western commercial society. The debate is not about art but about culture and economics. -- Virginia Postrel
The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion. -- Walter Benjamin
Criticism really used to hurt me. Most of these critics are usually frustrated artists, and they criticise other people's art because they can't do it themselves. It's a really disgusting job. They must feel horrible inside. -- Rosanna Arquette
But, when I had this feeling and started painting sacred art, as I had this feeling to do, then it come to me: my problem is I'll get a lot of criticism and another problem is my work's not good enough to sell. -- Howard Finster
I never really thought of myself as a musician. I'm not saying Sonic Youth was a conceptual-art project for me, but in a way, it was an extension of Warhol. Instead of making criticism about popular culture, as a lot of artists do, I worked within it to do something. -- Kim Gordon
Speaking out against rap music is useless, and it's futile. The reality is there's criticism for everything, but Jay-Z is one of the most remarkable artists of our time of any genre, and as a hip-hop artist he carries the weight of that art form with such splendor and grace and genius. -- Michael Eric Dyson
In order to figure this artmaking stuff out, it's trial and error and experimentation, and takes some time and hard thinking. Putting work out in many forms and stages is an extension of how I see things. I feel the art process is best served when it invites comments and constructive criticism from people. -- Jim Goldberg
The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art - and, by analogy, our own experience - more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means. -- Susan Sontag
Criticism is easy, art is difficult. -- Philippe Nericault Destouches
Nothing touches a work of art so little as criticism. -- Rainer Maria Rilke
Self-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practice. -- Joyce Carol Oates
Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art. -- Harry S Truman
He only moves toward the perfection of his art whose criticism surpasses his achievement. -- Leonardo da Vinci
The practice of "reviewing"... in general has nothing in common with the art of criticism. -- Henry James
To arrange a library is to practice in a quiet and modest way the art of criticism. -- Jorge Luis Borges
Old art offers just as good a criticism of new art as new art offers of old. -- Jasper Johns
In art, rebellion is consummated and perpetuated in the act of real creation, not in criticism or commentary. -- Albert Camus
Works of art are of an infinite loneliness and with nothing so little to be reached as with criticism. -- Rainer Maria Rilke
Nothing touches a work of art so little as words of criticism: they always result in more or less fortunate misunderstandings. -- Rainer Maria Rilke
Criticism is above all a gift, an intuition, a matter of tact and flair; it cannot be taught or demonstrated--it is an art. -- Henri Frederic Amiel
I don't care about my "impact" - I only care about the theater as an art form and criticism as an act of writing. -- Neil Patrick Harris
Art is a criticism of society and life, and I believe that if life became perfect, art would be meaningless and cease to exist. -- Naguib Mahfouz
Jed Perl writes precisely and ecstatically. Antoine' s Alphabet is a history and a fairy tale, a work of criticism, and a work of art. -- Jonathan Safran Foer
artists often lie behind on the field long after the art combine, the broad-bladed harvester of informed criticism, has mowed, bailed, and stored the crop. -- Anne Truitt
Criticism talks a good deal of nonsense, but even its nonsense is a useful force. It keeps the question of art before the world, insists upon its importance. -- Henry James
Art criticism everywhere is now at a low ebb, intellectually corrupt, swamped in meaningless jargon, distorted by political correctitudes, anxiously addressed only to other critics and their ilk. -- Brian Sewell

Send