Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There is a constant ebb and flow in art historical reputations. The reputation of even the greatest figures like Picasso are in flux.
Take Damien Hirst out of contemporary art history, and there's an incredible void. Great artists, like great people, have second acts.
From 1940 to the present, the art world and particularly Los Angeles, has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.
I never really took a proper art class in college. I just started reading art magazines and going to galleries. I was really drawn to it.
Naturally, liquidity is a big factor in any market that seems to be a lot of money in the world, and there's a lot of discretionary money.
From 1940 to the present, the art world - and particularly Los Angeles - has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.
Your life moves in patterns toward things, and things that we achieve finally are part of this mosaic. I just think that we create our own fate.
Celebrity has become, for better or worse, an art form. An artist can use themselves as a medium to become a celebrity as a walking work of art.
I believe that an art exhibition can be engaging, fun and deeply intellectually satisfying and serious. These are not contradictory concepts in art.
I like the idea of a love story between men. There is a great affection between men, which exists much more in ethnic groups: Latin, Italian, Jewish.
Every day you run into artists on the streets in SoHo or other creative people you want to do something with. There's nothing to match that chance encounter.
I want to use whatever connections to get a super-outstanding Basquiat in the White House. It could be one of mine. It could be something that a friend owns.
One of the biggest things happening in the art world is this idea of expansion. No one embodies this aspect of what art is becoming better than James Franco.
The art world is never going to be popular like the NFL, but more people are buying art and I think that's cushioning, to a great extent, our art-market cycles.
In the 1970s when I started in the art world, no self-respecting artist would have stood in line to try to get on a television show. It never would have happened.
Sometimes you do a sound installation, and the first day or two it is very exciting. Then you are hearing this every day for a month, and it becomes like a torture.
I believe in the popularizing of art. But when you get right down to it, it's a bit of an elitist world. Not just economically elitist - how many people read poetry?
Overall, I think any opportunity to expose people to art on a mass level - to have some kid in Oklahoma say to his mother, "I want to be an artist" - is a good thing.
When you go out skating with your friends, you need one friend who knows how to take a good picture. Without the picture, there is no proof that you pulled the trick.
Overall, I think any opportunity to expose people to art on a mass level - to have some kid in Oklahoma say to his mother, 'I want to be an artist' - is a good thing.
Ramp skating has become the most popular televised form of skating because they can constrain it. They can judge it based on what's happening within this box of a ramp.
I was an actor as a kid in Boston. Then I went to art school with Brice Marden, the Massachusetts College of Art. So the hybrid of being an actor and artist is a director.
For me, collecting is sort of a natural extension of being an art dealer, because if you don't want to collect the artist, then you probably shouldn't be representing them.
Street culture is punk, hip-hop, skateboarding, surfing, graffiti. It's like a massive global culture that is all tied together. But for so many years it was very geographic.
Disney is our contemporary landscape. The best art will reflect that and challenge you. Disney comforts you, whereas the best art shakes up your comfort level and perception.
When Robert Benton was doing the movie 'In the Still of the Night,' I'd choreographed the auction scene and supplied the paintings and had a bit part - I was bidding against Meryl Streep.
There is more to representing art than selling art. The life of the gallery is dependent on the renewal and refreshment of its artists and dealers. When that stops happening, it's the end.
Physically, it's getting impossible for me to travel that much. I want to support my artists by showing up at their openings, but I can't always be in Hong Kong one minute and Geneva the next.
People see owning a gallery as a way to get rich. I never thought that I could get rich in the art world. I wanted a life in art. I wanted to live with artists. I wanted to make beautiful shows.
When a collector says, "You've got to educate me," or "What's a good investment?" then I don't know what to say. I have no idea. Let's face it, I'm probably going to recommend artists that I represent.
You have to be a little bit cautious when the market gets quite strong because there's a tendency to anoint a genius artist every other day. That would be a word of advice for the collectors out there.
Historically, art has always had a market. When one medieval fiefdom defeated another they would drag back its jewels, gold, tapestries and art objects as the spoils of war. Art equaled power, riches and culture.
I have a good visual memory. I'm good with faces, but names - I get in trouble a lot; I can't seem to remember people. People think I'm rude. As a side comment, you know, I'm not being rude: I just kind of blank out.
I've never been what they call a 'pure gallerist.' I find that somewhat pretentious, honestly - I'm an art dealer. I like to show great artists of our time, but I also like dealing. And I think they reinforce each other.
I would begin by collecting lithographs and etchings. It's a way of coming in and benefiting from real quality art. Even younger artists make wonderful prints. Prints can become very valuable. That's how I began collecting.
I don't think the art market is for everybody. Yeah, of course we have a global gallery. But we're like the one-tenth of the one-tenth of the one-tenth. OK? Not just who's buying but who's really seriously engaged with art.
As a result of World War II, European artists migrated to America, enlarging the scene and diminishing Paris as the center. America was beginning its dominance of the art world with the emergence of the Abstract Expressionists.
I actually taught perceptual psychology at N.Y.U. when I was younger. I was interested in the aesthetic impulse in lower primates. But what really interested me in Dian Fossey was that she made a difference - she saved the gorillas.
The so-called "secondary market" has also always been something that I'm comfortable with. I'm not a dealer who turns his nose up at that part of the business. I'm an art dealer - my primary responsibility is to represent the artist.
I'm not in the luxury-goods business. I sell unique objects. I wish I was in luxury goods because then I could just call the factory and say, 'I need 10,000 more of whatever.' But I can't - because then it's not art, it's something else.
Elizabeth Taylor is one of the great cultural icons. She is a part of our history and should be celebrated.… This presentation is very special for the community, there are so many people who want to understand this side of Elizabeth Taylor.
Good jazz has been a big part of my life as far as my interest in music, and... It's kind of weird now with music, the way technology is, with downloading and iPods and electronic distribution, and its kind of - you miss something, I think.
We're in a post-conceptual era where it's really the artist's idea and vision that are prized rather than the ability to master the crafts that support the work. Today, our understanding of an artist is closer to a philosopher than to a craftsman.
The '80s market was only a Japanese market. It was the Japanese outbidding each other for the most expensive works of art. When the Japanese economy went down the tubes, there was no one left to pay the prices that have been recorded for all of those works.
When I was looking at the Russian Constructivists, these agitprop artists actually painted on trains. It was a heavy influence. They were bringing art to the people, to the masses, and breaking it out of the clubbiness of the art world, which is a monolith.
I was a fan of Andy's since I was a small kid. I recall seeing an ad of famous people on an airplane together. It was caricature drawing. There was Muhammad Ali, there was Miles Davis, and there was Andy Warhol. I had a fascination with him since I was little.
I don't think you can tell somebody how they should collect. I think it's just about being turned on by art.At the end of the day, some people just kind of get it. They don't all get it in the same way or get the same artists, but it's a journey that excites them.
The conceptual artist Ai WeiWei illustrates the schizoid society that rapid change has produced - sometimes by reassembling Ming-style furniture into absurd and useless arrangements, or by carefully painting and antiquing a Coca-Cola logo on an ancient Chinese pot.
Art is not an investment. Art is something you buy because you are financially solvent enough to give yourself a pleasure of living with great works rather than having to just see them in museums. People who are buying art at the top of the market as an investment are foolish.
When Nixon opened the door to China in the early 1970s, Chinese artists got their first view of the West. Suddenly five centuries of Western art lay before them as a stylistic smorgasbord. Chinese artists could reinterpret it out of admiration or try to replace it. They choose the former.