Best 87 quotes of Walter Darby Bannard on MyQuotes

A clear idea about the nature of quality in art will always result in inferior art tailored to it.

A critic without a good eye is a eunuch in a harem.

An ivory tower is a fine place as long as the door is open.

Art flows more easily when you are not thinking about what 'should' be in it or how it 'should' be done. The Impressionists taught us to look and see, not assume.

Art is like a butterfly fluttering in a meadow. Analysis of art is like a butterfly on a pin. Each has its value, but we must always be aware of the difference, and what is gained or lost.

Art is making something better without knowing what better is until you make it.

Art is not 'about.' Art is.

Art is not truth. Truth conforms to reality. Art invents reality.

Art is there for nourishment, not explication.

Art is too popular. If plumbing was as popular as art is we would have amateur plumbers running around brandishing wrenches and Roto-Rooters, climbing in and out of sewers and writing gibberish about pipe systems. And none of our our toilets would work.

Art makes you reinvent the wheel with regularity. If you don't, art gets bored and slips away.

Art may be for the privileged few but they have earned the privilege and deny it to no one.

Art rides in on pleasure.

Asking art to express ideas is like asking a Sumo wrestler to play charades.

Assumptions are usually presumptuous but often correct.

Big minds have big ideas. Small minds use big ideas to justify bad ideas.

Complete freedom debilitates art but reveals much about character.

Conceptual art' is an oxymoron. Concepts are articulations of fact or supposition, not attributes of quality.

Convention and restriction release inhibition and provoke the imagination.

Craft' gets a bad rap. Mediocre art is not caused by craft; it is caused by artists. Good art employs whatever craft works best.

Dogmatism spreads its roots in the fertile soil of uncertainty.

Don't apologize, justify or rationalize bad art or bad writing. If you do, you are part of it.

Don't explain, enjoy.

Experience is real. Painting, which comes out of experience, is real. The world is an illusion.

Good art has everything you need to know about it in the work, not on a wall label. Art is here to take us beyond language.

Good art looks new because the artist has recombined something old to make something better.

Good art, no matter how simple or casual-seeming, always carries a high density of choice.

Good new art may not look like art. Inspiration doesn't follow style, it creates it.

Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past.

If art depended on content, then one painting of an apple would be as good as the next one.

If we see an object as a bowl, it may inhibit seeing it as craft, just as seeing it as craft might inhibit seeing it as art. See first; name later.

If you learn something too well, it will get in the way of your perception of reality.

In ART as in Life the Best Way to REMEDY mistakes is to take advantage of them.

In art there is no absolute good or bad, but it is absolute that there is good and bad.

It matters little if something is 'craft' or 'art.' The question is only this: does it give me pleasure?

Live to paint, don't paint to live.

Limitation of means is a precondition of excellence. Creative freedom chooses its limitations. Destructive freedom rejects them heedlessly.

Making art is like swimming underwater in a blindfold.

Many years ago, Clement Greenberg said, 'All profoundly original work looks ugly at first.' This should be updated now to 'All profoundly ugly work looks original at first.

Most art is just surface noise.

Most people find facts irritating. Facts interfere with their systems of denial.

Most 'profound truths' are just timely ideas.

No high-minded painter of the last fifty years has been able to come to terms with his art without coming to terms with the problem of cubism.

Nothing is as hopeless as trying to justify art in words.

Of course I will look at anything, but I have not got the time or the patience to keep on looking at art that I know could be better. I don't want art that needs fixing, I want art that sends me back to the studio to fix my own.

One needs to be right before getting righteous.

Originality is way overrated. To make, you need to take. All great artists do.

Postmodernism does not facilitate better art. It rationalizes inferior art by wrapping it in words - a suit of armor with nobody inside.

Postmodernism does not help us understand good art. It encourages art that can be easily understood and throws in something catchy to cover the loss of mystery.

Postmodernism is Modernism with Alzheimer's.