Billy Al Bengston Quotes

Art to me is not precious enough that I feel territorial about what the word gets applied to. Conversations about what counts as art and what doesn't doesn't captivate my attention very much.

There's been too much attention on marketing. Can't we just talk about the paintings?

The philistine provides the best definition of art. Anything that makes him rage is first class.

I think we're much smarter than we were. Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there's another purpose to it.

People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.

Art matters.

I have no evangelical feelings about art at all. I despise art education. Art doesn't lend itself to education. There is no knowledge there. It's a set of propositions about how things should look.

I realize that every picture isn't a work of art.

If a nonartist teaches a subject called art, it is nonart.

I was truly ignorant about art before the film.

Mostly people are ignorant, what is the language of painting. You know, they're ignorant. It is so difficult to make them aware, but time will teach them.

Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.

The educator and the public need to have an opportunity to discuss why certain art is important.

I see 30 to 40 gallery shows a week, and no matter what kind of mood I'm in, no matter how bad the art is, I almost always feel better afterward. I can learn as much from bad art as from good.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

I think art was the one thing my high school didn't give. And I think that was probably one reason why I was interested in it.

If I ever go back to college, I'd study art education.

Art for art's sake is dead, if it ever lived.

It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all.

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

Buying art is not understanding art.

Art is a habit-forming drug. Art has absolutely no existence as veracity, as truth. People always speak of it with this great, religious reverence, but why should it be so revered?

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.

Art is good, bad, boring, ugly, useful to us or not.

Art indeed is a term referring to the social source and to the social utility of creative acts.