Andy Rooney Quotes

Sometimes good art jumps out at me; most of the time I see bad art, or see nothing at all and just drift, feeling weird, pretending to be fine.

Art cannot single-handedly create enthusiasm... it merely contributes to enthusiasm and guides us to be more conscious of feelings that we might previously have experienced only tentatively or hurriedly.

The relation of feeling toward art and its bringing-forth can be one of production or one of reception and enjoyment.

you will never catch up. Walk around feeling like a leaf know you could tumble at any second. Then decide what to do with your time. --The Art of Disappearing

When I have an exhibition, I usually arrange it so that if people want to, they can spend two hours there. That way, people who like it don't feel cheated when they go. I want them to walk into the exhibition space and look low and at other levels and angles. The same with emotions. I want them to be emotionally manipulated, to come out feeling something. I want them to laugh, smile, feel sad. Even if they feel angry, that's okay.

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?

How much more sensuality invites to art than does sentimentality.

I know when I watch certain actors or if I watch Thom Yorke sing on stage, I'm affected by it emotionally. I guess that's what we are all striving for in art but that's such a beautiful thing that happens between two people that may never even meet. So when you do get to meet someone who was affected in that way, it's awesome.

The only time you ever have in which to learn anything or see anything or feel anything, or express any feeling or emotion, or respond to an event, or grow, or heal, is this moment, because this is the only moment any of us ever gets. You're only here now; you're only alive in this moment.

I am one of the heretics who believes that art must be enjoyed first and analyzed later.

Time after time have nations, ay, and rich and strong nations, learned in the arts, been, and passed away to be forgotten, so that no memory of them remains. This is but one of several; for Time eats up the works of man.

It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed after a while you may like it or you may not.

One of the surest evidences of an elevated taste is the power of enjoying works of impassioned terrorism, in poetry, and painting. The man who can look at impassioned subjects of terror with a feeling of exultation may be certain he has an elevated taste.

We live ruins amid ruins.

Man is apt to be more moved by the art of his own period, not because it is more perfect, but because it is organically related to him.

Art has nothing to do with taste. Art is not there to be tasted

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible to feelings as to sight?

Love, sex, food, friendship, art, play, beauty and the simple pleasure of a cup of tea are all well and good, but never forget that God/the universe is determined to kill you by whatever means necessary.

The feeling we experience while we look at a picture is not to be distinguished from the picture or from ourselves. the feeling, picture, and ourselves are united in one mystery.

Many persons feel art, some understand it; but few both feel and understand it.

Art is an experience, not an object.

In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are capable of it.

If I could prescribe a single rule for looking at a work of art it would be to enjoy it. If we're honest with ourselves, we have to admit we enjoy our tears just as much as we enjoy our laughter. The only moments of life that are a bore are when we don't care one way or another.

The popular distinction between 'constructive' and 'destructive' criticism is a sentimentality: the mind too weak to perceive in what respects the bad fails is not strong enough to appreciate in what the good succeeds. To be without discrimination is to be unable to praise. The critic who lets you know that he always looks for something to like in works he discusses is not telling you anything about the works or about art; he is saying 'see what a nice person I am.

A work of art doesn't have to be explained. If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed.