How to Write About Contemporary Art Quotes

“Good art-writers break conventions, hold a few sacrosanct, innovate their own. They measure their limits by instinct, not by rote. Mostly they learn by seeing miles of art, and reading good literature in bulk. There is no substitute, for a writer, for possessing a natural ear for language; a rich vocabulary; a flair for varied sentence structures; an original opinion; some arresting ideas to share. I can teach you none of that.”
― Gilda Williams, How to Write About Contemporary Art

“Произведения искусства как такие практические прецеденты суть сироты, готовые быть усыновленными, выпестованными и приспособленными к требованиям самых что ни есть неожиданных новых обстоятельств. (арт-критик Дэйв Хикки. Сироты (Art in America), 2009)”
― Гильда Уильямс, How to Write About Contemporary Art

“Many cherish art as a special haven within an over-schematized world, where ambiguities can thrive. If an artwork’s message is self-evident, maybe it’s just an illustration, a decorative non-entity, a well-executed craft object, hardly counting as ‘significant’ art at all. It’s not just that without an explanation the viewer is lost; without some written framework to steady it, the art itself risks losing its way, never gaining traction in the contemporary art system. From this perspective, both viewer and artwork alike are as if handicapped without the art-world’s special assistance.”
― Gilda Williams, How to Write About Contemporary Art