1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957
Context: I want to clarify our understanding of the word 'art' – to be sure, without an attempt to a definition. What I have in mind is that art may be bad, good or indifferent, but, whatever adjective is used, we must call it art, and bad art is still art in the same way as a bad emotion is still an emotion.
Therefore, when I refer to 'art coefficient', it will be understood that I refer not only to great art, but I am trying to describe the subjective mechanism which produces art in a raw state – 'à l'état brute' – bad, good or indifferent.
Source: Philosophical Sketches (1962), Ch. 5, p. 94
“There is only good and bad art.”
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
Source: The Agony and the Ecstasy: A Biographical Novel of Michelangelo
“One good Art's better than a thousand bad.”
Fab. LVII: Of the Fox and the Cat
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)
“Drawing is the honesty of the art. There is no possibility of cheating. It is either good or bad.”
Quote from People, 27 September 1976
Quotes of Salvador Dali, 1971 - 1980
“All great art has madness, and quite a lot of bad art has it, too.”
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
“Pop Art is not painting because painting must have content and emotion.”
As quoted in "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" in The New York Times (18 November 2008)
“Life doesn't imitate art, it imitates bad television.”
