“Well, art is not communist -- not bourgeois either
It's no club and has no party line
Not wild nights make an artist -- not drugs or manifestos
It's art -- HA HA -- that's no secret
The one who makes art -- he's the artist..”

“If the genius is an artist, then he accomplishes his work as art, but neither he nor his work of art has a telos outside him.”

“Art is not a handicraft; it is the transmission of feeling the artist has experienced.”

“The new attitude of the critic toward the artist has been rationalized for me by a leading European art historian who is also an influential critic of current art. It is based on a theory of division of labor in making art history. The historian, he contends, knows art history and, in fact, creates it; the artist knows only how to do things. Left to himself, the artist is almost certain to do the wrong thing — to deviate from the line of art history and thus to plunge into oblivion. The critic's role is to steer him in the proper direction and advise changes in his technique and subject matter that will coordinate his efforts with the forces of development. Better still, critics should formulate historically valid projects for artists to carry out. That not all critics have the same expectations of the future of art does not, I realize, weaken the cogency of my colleague's argument. The surviving artist would be one who has been lucky enough to pick the winning critic. My own view that art should be left to artists seemed to my mentor both out-of-date and irresponsible.”

“A Bachelor of Arts is one who makes love to a lot of women, and yet has the art to remain a bachelor.”

“An artist can't produce great art unless he has a philosophy. He can't say something unlee he has something to say.”

“As art sinks into paralysis, artists multiply. This anomaly ceases to be one if we realize that art, on its way to exhaustion, has become both impossible and easy.”

“The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.”

“Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.”

“Being an artist now means to question the nature of art. If one is questioning the nature of painting, one cannot be questioning the nature of art. If an artist accepts painting (or sculpture) he is accepting the tradition that goes with it. That’s because the word art is general and the word painting is specific. Painting is a kind of art. If you make paintings you are already accepting (not questioning) the nature of art. One is then accepting the nature of art to be the European tradition of a painting-sculpture dichotomy.”