Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, read more

Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make read more

As for types like my own, obscurely motivated by the conviction that our existence was worthless if we didn't make a turning point of it, we were assigned to the humanities, to poetry, philosophy, painting -- the nursery games of humankind, which had to be left behind when the age of science began. The humanities would be called upon to choose a wallpaper for the crypt, as the end drew near.

To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.

To send light into the darkness of men's hearts - such is the duty of the artist.

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection.

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack read more

Feminist art is not some tiny creek running off the great river of real art. It is not some crack in an otherwise flawless stone. It is, quite spectacularly I think, art which is not based on the subjugation of one half of the species. It is art which will take the great human themes --love, death, heroism, suffering, history itself --and render them fully human. It may also, though perhaps our imaginations are so mutilated now that we are incapable even of the ambition, introduce a new theme, one as great and as rich as those others --should we call it "joy"?.

I have been no more than a medium, as it were.

I have been no more than a medium, as it were.