Most of the appearance of mirth in the world is not mirth, it is art. The wounded spirit is not seen, but walks under a disguise.
There's a new Mozart, a new Miles Davis, a new Misty Copeland, a new Matisse potentially languishing in a math class somewhere. If we fail to introduce them to art, we fail humanity.
I like playing with that space between laughter and discomfort where your discomfort can also make you laugh, and you're confused about the mixed feelings. That's challenging, and I think that's what makes for some of the best art.
When you feel the need to moan and groan, laugh with woeful recognition and eat flaky pastries. If you hear yourself taking the art of complaining a little too seriously, ask yourself what you're trying to accomplish, exactly.
I'd much rather go to a Banksy art show than a Moby art show. My art is painfully naive.
I'm not winning any modeling awards, I'm not a Rhodes Scholar, but I genuinely feel that if you're taking time out of your day and your energy to comment on my art, then I got your attention.
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 love to collect modern art.
You can understand nothing about art, particularly modern art, if you do not understand that imagination is a value in itself.
Even when I was a little girl, I remember going to the Museum of Modern Art. I think my parents took me there once or twice. And what I really remember is the design collection.
I am the sort of guy who does go to modern art shows.
The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.
In its most limited sense, modern, art would seem to concern itself only with the technical innovations of the period.
The early giants of modern dance - Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis - barely left traces of their art.
I had art as a major, along with English, French and History. I had dance, modern dance. In English I was allowed to write my own poetry, which I eventually got published.
I'm fascinated by Comte's clear-eyed analysis of what was wrong with modern society, which is that you've got industrial capitalism on one side and romantic love on the other. Those, along with non-instrumental art, are supposed to get you through the day?
The whole Modernist lie is that art is about the artist.
Cooking is an art, but all art requires knowing something about the techniques and materials. Using modernist techniques, you get more control, and that allows you to be more artistic, not less!
There was, when I came to New York in the 1970s, no more profound or moving experience than MoMA, an almost perfect piece of 20th Century modernist expression, existing in an extraordinary balance - modestly, functionally, elegantly - with the extraordinary art it held. This place changed my life. I was transformed by every visit.
