
“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
“There is only good and bad art.”
My Heart's in the Highlands (1939)
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.
“One good Art's better than a thousand bad.”
Fab. LVII: Of the Fox and the Cat
The Fables of Aesop (2nd ed. 1668)
Quote of Ad Reinhardt (1963); as cited in: Joseph Kosuth, (1969), " Art after Philosophy http://www.ubu.com/papers/kosuth_philosophy.html"
1956 - 1967
Variant: The one thing to say about art is that it is one thing. Art is art-as-art and everything else is everything else. Art as art is nothing but art. Art is not what is not art.
Notes, 1988; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Art' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/art-1
1980's
Source: The Art of the Dance (1928), p. 62.