Seven Days In The Art World Quotes
"Art is trying to sell you yourself. That's what is different about it. Art is what makes life worth living." - Keith Tyson
"The hammer punctuates and passes judgment. It acts as a full stop to the end of every lot, but it is also a little punishment for those who didn’t bid high enough." - Narrator
"For works that sell below five million, the market is astonishingly deep—deeper than ever. But I was surprised that the market for expensive works was thinner tonight." - Dominique Lévy
"I don’t care about an artist’s intentions. I care if the work looks like it might have some consequences." - Dave Hickey
"An auction is one of the most boring things known to humankind. People sit there for two hours with this idiot droning on. It’s hot. It’s uncomfortable. People are falling asleep." - Christopher Burge
"Art is more like real estate than stocks. Some Warhols are like studio apartments in midblock buildings with northern exposures, while other Warhols are penthouse properties with 360-degree views." - Amy Cappellazzo
"The truth is, you’ve got standing room, the terrible seats, the good seats, the very good seats, and the aisle seats—they are the best." - Juliette Gold
"People want to become part of the lifestyle. Buying contemporary art is about going to the Basel and Frieze art fairs, the Venice Biennale, and, of course, the evening auctions in New York." - Philippe Ségalot
"The most expensive purchases—the purchases where you suffer the most—will turn out to be the best ones." - Philippe Ségalot
"Every season we wait for the big correction. No boom lasts forever." - Jack Gold
"Every grad has a space of their own that they are allowed to use twenty-four hours a day." - Hobbs
"There is a real masculine aggression to iconic 1950s abstract expressionism." - Fiona
"Criticality is a strategy for the production of knowledge." - Charles Gaines
"Creative is definitely a dirty word." - Art student
"We hunt for students who have some spark of originality." - President Lavine
"An artist thinks about culture through visual means." - Thomas Lawson
"To be a good artist in the long term, you need to trust your own intuition and instincts." - Chris Burden
"For clear investigations, you need time." - Asher
"The amount of art in the world is a bit depressing." - Phil Collins
"You can’t use money as an index of quality. That will drive you crazy!" - John Baldessari
"I’m just an ordinary rich person." - David Teiger
"When I start a painting, I have no idea what it will look like." - Tomma Abts
"My work hovers between illusion and object, and it reminds you of things. For example, I create a daylight effect or a feeling of movement."
"I always work inside out. I know it’s finished when the work feels independent of me."
"Why, as an artist, would you want to explain yourself? Painting is so visual that it is very difficult to say things that don’t compromise it."
"For me, you care one hundred percent about what you do. You can’t say, ‘It’s okay like this but it could have been a different way.’ You have a total vision of how things have to be—it has to be just right."
"I want to participate in things that are about art, not artists’ personalities. I wanted to stay an artist and not suddenly become something else… Like a media person."
"A great work of art allows you to look at it without it nagging you. It’s not that it’s open to any interpretation, but it’s not got a limited fixed meaning."
"Ergo refers to René Descartes’s famous statement, ‘Cogito ergo sum.’ Ergot is a fungus with hallucinogenic properties that was synthesized to make LSD."
"For an artist, the most important thing is to entertain yourself on a daily basis. And you want to be able to sustain a level for a long period and actually get better."
"Thinking you’re going to win is a good way of torturing yourself."
"The spirit of art is to express the truth. Politicians are too involved in red tape to be human. Artists are freer to express themselves."
"Art accumulates meaning through an extended collaborative act. You put into words something that everyone has seen."
"The greatest critical work in my mind is the Talmud. It’s one argument superseding another—an ongoing, open-ended dialogue that allows multiple points of view."
"It’s not about innovation for innovation’s sake or the ambition to be novel or unique. All good art gives us an opportunity for a different relationship with time."
"There’s an argument out there that once upon a time the critic led the dealer led the collector, whereas now, supposedly, the collector leads the dealer leads the critic."
"It’s like a Rubik’s cube. Every ad involves a story. The Basel Art Fair ad cannot go next to an ad for a gallery that is not in Basel."
"Artforum is like the dominant athletic team who always finds a way to win. It’s like the New York Yankees or Manchester United. It’s always there, and you have this sense that it always will be."
"The mission of the magazine is to privilege the art. It’s the only way to bring meaning to all of this. Otherwise, we’re just killing trees."
"I really enjoy speaking the language. It’s theater to me. I would have loved to have been an actor."
"Schimmel has made history repeatedly. It’s money well spent—peanuts compared to what we’ve poured into fabricating Oval."
"Japan is a homogeneous culture. They don’t like it when someone sticks out too much. They want to pound ’em back in."
"An artist is someone who understands the border between this world and that one."
"I don’t want to discriminate on the basis of color, but the yellows are sticky! They’re mean because they show the brushstrokes."
"My weak point—I cannot focus on just one thing. I have to set up many things."
"I’m a very bad president. I have low technique for driving the company."
"I used to think that my staff were motivated by money, but the most important thing for creative people is the sense that they are learning."
"To experience Takashi, you have to experience the commercial elements in his work."
"We’re going to have a room in the exhibition devoted to merchandise."
"I like to think that I have a more honest relationship with our artists than some other dealers, but I don’t want to be anyone’s shrink."
"If you put all your energy into something, amid all the confusion, you have a fifty percent chance of making a big splash."
"The Biennale is like a high school reunion where everyone turned out to be a success. It’s not the real world."
"You name me a biennial—Istanbul, São Paulo, Shanghai, Moscow—and we are probably there."
"I’m terrible at hanging works. I might walk in and take the one painting that I consider to be the best and put it on the quickest, easiest wall."
"It’s not a question of (a) the quality of artist or (b) the ability to pull it off. It’s ultimately about the perception of how the show will fit into the greater theme and who is politically useful at the moment."
"Altmejd transformed the pavilion into a wunderkammer, a cabinet of curiosities."
"I love stepping out of the everyday into the space of art. I love to be immersed in an idea or an aesthetic or something phenomenological."
"Shows that should be called 'Here’s my latest year of work' are often disappointing."
"Venice is a big party, and the preview is a networking experience."
"The notion of choosing somebody to represent your country for art is not so dissimilar from choosing someone who represents your country for politics."
"The thin boundary between art and entertainment is slowly vanishing."
"I am obsessed by the audience—not in a stupid, commercial sense, but I am hypersensitive to my works’ wider readability."
"A good Biennale crystallizes heterogeneity."
"Art in a well-staged show in an exotic setting—what could be more persuasive?"
"It’s not just that people hope that they’ll have a moving experience with an artwork or a chance meeting with their favorite artist in a hotel bar…Everyone is secretly expecting that something beautiful will happen to them."
"At lunchtime I went into one of the nicer restaurants near the Giardini and…everybody in the restaurant got up and started clapping."