What Are You Looking At? Quotes

“It is Duchamp who is to blame for the whole “is it art?” debate, which of course is exactly what he intended. As far as he was concerned, the role in society of an artist was akin to that of a philosopher; it didn’t even matter if he or she could paint or draw. An artist’s job was not to give aesthetic pleasure—designers could do that; it was to step back from the world and attempt to make sense or comment on it through the presentation of ideas that had no functional purpose other than themselves.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell

“An artist’s job was not to give aesthetic pleasure—designers could do that; it was to step back from the world and attempt to make sense or comment on it through the presentation of ideas that had no functional purpose other than themselves.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Art is always to an extent about trying to create order out of chaos.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“The academy expected artists to make work based on mythology, religious iconography, history or classical antiquity in a style that idealized the subject. Such fakery didn’t interest this group of young, ambitious painters. They wanted to leave their studios and go outside to document the modern world around them. It was a bold move. Artists simply didn’t wander off and paint 'low' subjects such as ordinary people picnicking, or drinking or walking; it wasn’t the done thing. It would be like Steven Spielberg hiring himself out for wedding videos.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell

“Henri Rousseau was a simple, poorly educated man with an air of innocent naïveté. The Montmartre crowd gave him the nickname “Le Douanier,” meaning “customs officer,” referring to his job as a tax collector.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Yes, to a certain extent, it is. Original thought in art is important. There’s no intellectual value in plagiarism. But there is in authenticity. Modern art is about innovation and imagination, not the status quo, or worse: pale imitation. And then there’s the financial value we place on rarity in our capitalist society, where the laws of supply and demand rule. Put all three together—originality, authenticity, rarity—and you have the reason why a Malevich Black Square is worth a million dollars and a version by you or me is not.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Nothing can be done except little by little.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“ambitious provincial towns and tourist-oriented countries wanting to “do a Bilbao”—that is, to transform their reputations and raise their profile by commissioning an eye-catching modern art gallery.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“The museum says the information is for the uninitiated visitor, but the truth is that, on occasion, it has been written for a handful of world experts in a language only art insiders would understand.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“The person with the paintbrush or sculptor’s chisel was now the dominant figure in the relationship, having thrown down the gauntlet to a newly subordinate and vulnerable viewer, daring us to take a leap of faith. Which remains the case today: abstract art puts us all at risk of looking like suckers, believing in something that isn’t there.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“The deal being that Kandinsky would paint a lovely, vibrant picture in the hope that we would resist the temptation to translate the colors into known objects or themes, but instead allow ourselves to be transported into an imaginary world in much the same way as we would if listening to a piece of music.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“How do you make a profound and heartfelt anti-capitalist work of art, for example, if you've spent the previous evening at a swanky museum dinner sitting next to the head of some investment bank, who also happens to be one of your major collectors/clients? Or how do you make a work about the environment when your own carbon footprint is far larger than most? Can it be possible to produce a painting or sculpture that seeks to illuminate an unfairness in a society from which you are so obviously benefiting? And how do you go about criticizing the establishment, when you are a fully signed-up member of its inner circle? The answer is, you don't.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell

“We'll be fine’, Pierre-Auguste Renoir said assertively. ‘We are good artist; we know that. Remember what Baudelaire said before he died: "Nothing can be done except little by little." That is what we are doing, it is not big, but it is something!”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell

“The open-minded, talent-spotting, artist-nurturing Camille Pissarro summed up Van Gogh in one typically compassionate remark: “Many times I’ve said that this man will either go mad or outpace us all. That he would do both, I did not foresee.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“In the seven years I worked at the Tate Gallery in London about six and a half were spent discussing possible exhibition titles. “I Kid You Not,” “No Word of a Lie,” “It’s a Material World,” were all discussed at some time or another as potential names for a show. A typical “titles meeting” would involve about fifteen people, thirteen of whom remained mute, other than to say “no” or “absolutely not,” while a couple of optimistic individuals made suggestions. It was ridiculous, of course, but it does highlight a central tension in the art world: public engagement versus scholarship.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Picasso is said to have once mused that it took him four years to learn to paint like Raphael but a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: 150 Years of Modern Art in a Nutshell

“That, he thought, was the essential purpose of art—to capture the universal in the everyday, which was particular to their here and now: the present.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“It’s a urinal! It’s not even the original. The art is in the idea, not the object.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“He considered the medium to be secondary: first and foremost was the idea. Only after an artist had settled on and developed a concept would he or she be in a position to choose a medium, and it should be the one with which the idea could most successfully be expressed. And if that meant using a porcelain urinal, so be it. In essence, art could be anything as long as the artist said so. That was a big idea.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Duchamp thought it was for artists to decide what was and what was not a work of art. His position was that if an artist said something was a work of art, having influenced its context and meaning, then it was a work of art.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“In La Nona Ora Cattelan is playing on people’s belief in God and their acceptance that the Pope is closer to Him than any other living person—a position once held by Jesus. But he is also questioning people’s belief in art, and how it has become a form of worship in a secular society—he is questioning our newfound faith. His cosmic rock crushes an old and a new belief system in one strike.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“This is where the fun starts for Mondrian. His compositions are always asymmetrical, as it helped create a sense of movement, which set him the challenge of using his limited palette”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Balance, tension and equality was all for Mondrian.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“In my experience it is the abstract artists—those who spend their lives stripping away detail to reveal a universal truth—who are the worse offenders when it comes to using flowery, imprecise language to describe their work.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“It is not unknown for the artist to fall into the same trap. I have interviewed brilliant artists who are rightly revered for the intelligence, insight and beauty of their work. And yet, when a microphone is placed under the artist’s nose, all that clarity vanishes. It’s not unusual to find that after listening to half an hour of sub-clauses, qualifications and meandering metaphor one is no nearer to understanding an artist’s work: further away, in fact.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Somehow, those Russian artists were able to reduce everything to nothing in order to expose more than we knew was there. It’s about balance and optics, tension and texture. But more than that, it’s about the unconscious. Art that we like but we don’t quite know why. Malevich, Tatlin, Rodchenko, Popova and Lissitzky were brilliant visionaries, the pioneers of the first totally abstract art.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“As discussed earlier, this approach relies on the viewer believing that the artist is blessed with special talent and insight. But Rodchenko was saying that his Constructivist paintings were not special or transcendental works of art.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Rodchenko’s intention was to challenge the belief system that Malevich had instigated around his non-objective art. The Suprematist told the viewer that there was more to his triangles and squares than simply being pleasing pieces of graphic design; that his art contained hidden meaning and universal truths.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Rodchenko says his one-color, all-over canvases are non-representational and no more than a piece of painted material, while Mark Rothko says that his monochrome canvas is much more; it has some mystical, emotional and spiritual depth.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art

“Lyubov Popova, Aleksandra Ekster and Rodchenko’s wife, Varvara Stepanova (1894–1958), all played a major part in defining, developing and creating Constructivist art. Popova offered an early definition of their practice, saying “construction in painting is the sum of the energy of its parts.”
― Will Gompertz, What Are You Looking At?: The Surprising, Shocking, and Sometimes Strange Story of 150 Years of Modern Art