In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries or plagiarists.
—Paul Gauguin, 1895
Art is vice. You don’t marry it legitimately, you rape it.
—Edgar Degas, 1918
Art is a communication of ecstasy.
—Minor White, 1950
3
Art is a form of catharsis.
—Dorothy Parker, 1944
Art is a revolt against fate.
—André Malraux, 1951
Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth, at least the truth that is given to us to
understand.
—Pablo Picasso, 1972
Art has nothing to do with taste.
—Max Ernst
4
Art is anything you can get away with.
—Marshall McLuhan, 1964
Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.
—Frank Zappa, 2003
Any fool can paint a picture, but it takes a wise man to sell it.
—Samuel Butler, 1950
5
[Abstract art is] a product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly
bewildered.
—Al Capp, 1963
How many people become abstract in order to appear profound!
—Joseph Jourbert
6
One reassuring thing about modern art is that things can’t be as bad as they are painted.
—Anonymous
7
***
3
Sometimes misattributed to P. D. Ouspensky.
4
As quoted, without a date, by Jürgen Pech in 1996.
5
I am not confident that this quip had not been published earlier.
6
As quoted, without a date, by M. Paul de Raynal in 1862.
7
I have seen this observation attributed to some M. Walthall Jackson, but was unable to confirm
this authorship.
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