Where Picasso paints cause, Repin paints effect. Repin predigests art for the spectator and provides a short cut to the pleasure of art that is necessarily difficult in genuine art. Repin, or kitsch, is synthetic art.

The reality of art is disclosed only in experience, not in reflection upon experience.

The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms.

A poor life is lived by any one who doesn't regularly take time out to stand and gaze, or sit and listen, or touch, or smell, or brood, without any further end in mind, simply for the satisfaction gotten from what is gazed at, listened to, touched, smelled, or brooded upon.

It has become apparent that art can have a startling impact without really being or saying anything startling — or new. The character itself of being startling, spectacular, or upsetting has become conventionalized, part of safe good taste.

All profoundly original art looks ugly at first.

Art is a matter strictly of experience, not of principles and what counts first and last in art is quality, all other things are secondary.