Contemporary Art Quotes

• The basic unit for contemporary art is not the idea, but the analysis of and extension of sensations.

  Susan Sontag

  Art, Ideas, Analysis

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• This so-called contemporary art is not a form, but a philosophy of society.

  Ai Weiwei

  Art, Philosophy, Form

  "Zodiac sculptures display jailed Chinese artist's vision" By Alexandra Munroe, www.cnn.com. June 2, 2011.

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• There is no new wave, only the sea.

  Claude Chabrol

  Art, Sea, Wave

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.

  Tom Stoppard

  Art, Skills, Giving

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• There is a small world of people who are very interested in contemporary art and a slightly bigger world of people who look at contemporary art. But then there is a much larger world that doesn't realise how influential art is on things that they actually look at.

  Marc Jacobs

  Art, People, Looks

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• A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with.

  Banksy

  Art, Wall, Graffiti

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• One of the great currents in the contemporary experience of art is that it seems to come out of the experience of the author.

  Anish Kapoor

  Art, Currents, Contemporary

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• Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss.

  Banksy

  Smile, Art, Graffiti

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• Skill without imagination is craftsmanship and gives us many useful objects such as wickerwork picnic baskets. Imagination without skill gives us modern art.

  Tom Stoppard

  Art, Skills, America

  Artist Descending a Staircase (1972)

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• Contemporary art challenges us.. it broadens our horizons. It asks us to think beyond the limits of conventional wisdom.

  Eli Broad

  Art, Thinking, Challenges

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• If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time?

  Melvin Glover

  Art, Graffiti, Done

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• What is extraordinary about contemporary art is the energy - it has our energy. New energy. Pieces hundreds of years old are beautiful from an aesthetic point of view, but without our modern energy.

  Victor Pinchuk

  Beautiful, Art, Views

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• Somewhere a portion of contemporary art has to exist as an example of what the art and its context were meant to be.

  Donald Judd

  Art, Example, Were Meant To Be

  Donald Judd (1987). “Complete Writings, 1975-1986”

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• Contemporary art is an epoch of false money allied with false culture.

  Alexander Stoddart

  Art, Culture, Contemporary

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• All great contemporary artists, schooled or not, are essentially self-taught and are de-skilling like crazy.

  Jerry Saltz

  Art, Crazy, Self

  "The Italian Pleasures of Gabriele Paterkallos : A Renaissance of Romanticism in Modernity" by Pietros Maneos, www.huffingtonpost.com. May 29, 2012.

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• The problem with contemporary art is that no one bothers to do the research necessary to give people what they want.

  Michael Scott

  Art, Giving, People

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• New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas.

  Sol LeWitt

  Art, Ideas, Affliction

  Sol LeWitt (2006). “Sol LeWitt wall drawing 1176: seven basic colors and all their combinations in a square within a square : for Josef Albers”, Richter Verlag

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• Contemporary art will help me to modernise our society.

  Victor Pinchuk

  Art, Our Society, Helping

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• Art is about asking questions and engaging a dialog. By challenging or investigating conventions contemporary art helps promote an on-going sense of discovery, contemplation, and understanding. I think these are all important things.

  Kim Anderson

  Art, Thinking, Asking Questions

  "Interview with Kim Anderson: Material Matters". Sarasota Visual Art Interview, sarasotavisualart.com.

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• We are not disillusioned because we have no illusions... What we have and what is our strength, is our joy in life... in all its amoral aspects. That is also the basis of our contemporary art.

  Asger Jorn

  Art, Joy, Illusion

  Asger Jorn, Per Hovdenakk, Stine Høholt, Arken museum for moderne kunst (Ishøj, Denmark), Cobra Museum voor Moderne Kunst (Amstelveen, Netherlands) (2002). “Asger Jorn”

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• Most people don't like to be confronted with an actual fact-of-life because it's difficult to metabolize. A painting of a bowl of fruit is much easier. It's for the same reason why we don't like going to the doctor. The diagnosis and x-rays are too honest. This is what creates the perception that contemporary art is shocking or suspicious.

  Adamo Macri

  Life, Art, Doctors

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• I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art.

  Damien Hirst

  Art, Mean, Thinking

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• You might argue that the history of contemporary art is a series of avant-garde movements, each new wave outraging the last.

  Michael Scott

  Art, Might, Lasts

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• Every time some new huckster of angst-ridden metaphor is appointed by Art Forum, the congregation genuflects, stroking the catalog like a handful of Rosary beads, and starts spreading that old gospel according to Hyperbole. No questions asked... And thus the bill of goods is sold, all along the line. An art historical snake, swallowing its own tale.

  Abe Ajay

  Art, Snakes, Historical

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• While I know that the beautiful, the spiritual and the sublime are suspect today, I have begun to stop resisting the constant urge to deny that beauty has a valid right to exist in contemporary art.

  Ian Hornak

  Beautiful, Spiritual, Art

  Cover Magazine, 1994.

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