Viggo Mortensen Quotes

Now, there are so many movies, so many festivals, and so many awards going on, each judged with each other, like your work is worse than others and that's not fair. How can you tell what's best and what's worst from these awards? We're talking about art.

I think in any work of art, there always will be randomness about what is good, what is bad.

Art is very subjective and having to put numbers on it seems counterintuitive.

Artistic qualities that once seemed undeniable don't seem so now. Sometimes these fluctuations are only fickleness of taste, momentary glitches in an artist's work, or an artist getting ahead of his audience (it took me ten years to catch up to Albert Oehlen). Other times, however, these problems mean there's something wrong with the art.

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.

On one level, of course, the notion of judging films or books or music against each other is completely ridiculous. Who's to say '12 Years A Slave' is a better film than 'The Wolf of Wall Street'? Or that one album in a certain genre is better than another in a completely different genre?

Art is good but it isn't the best.

In the end, postmodern art is obscene not because it is offensive, but because it is boring.

A critic should be taught to criticise a work of art without making any reference to the personality of the author.

I don't have anything to say about other people's art and their work.

An artist is usually responsible only for the creation of a particular art. It's up to the critics to label it.

Art is difficult. It's not entertainment. There are only a few people who can say something about art - it's very restricted. When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not. Buying art is not understanding art.

Art is always criticized and always an outsider gets the blame.

Every time I make a picture the critics' estimate of American public taste goes down ten percent.

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.

To say of a picture, as is often said in its praise, that it shows great and earnest labour, is to say that it is incomplete and unfit for view.

If you want to look at a cheap shot, look at Mr. Koons's or Mr. Gober's art. By no definition is it art.

For many artists and critics, beauty is a discredited idea. It denotes the saccharine sylvan scenes and cheesy melodies that appealed to Granny.

A painting has to be beautiful. Even in its grotesqueness.

If the standard for art is the decency of its creators, we're going to have a lot of empty museums.

Art is subjective and, as an artiste, if our artistic work is not appreciated by the majority, it hurts.

In the field of aesthetic theory, humans are pattern-seeking creatures. That can be seen in terms of musical structures, patternmaking, even in terms of storytelling and literature.

I love art, painting, and drawing and studying art, like Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

If gaming were seen as an art, the important question would be not whether games are good for us but whether they are good, full stop.

One thing I don't do anymore as I've gotten older is that I don't make big blanket statements about whether or not an artist is good or bad.