One of the grotesqueries of present-day American life is the amount of reasoning that goes into displaying the wisdom secreted in bad movies while proving that modern art is meaningless. They have put into practice the notion that a bad art work cleverly interpreted according to some obscure Method is more rewarding than a masterpiece wrapped in silence.

Kitsch is the daily art of our time, as the vase or the hymn was for earlier generations. For the sensibility it has that arbitrariness and importance which works take on when they are no longer noticeable elements of the environment. In America kitsch is Nature. The Rocky Mountains have resembled fake art for a century.

Whoever undertakes to create soon finds himself engaged in creating himself.

The new painting has broken down every distinction between art and life.

Avant-gardism is an addiction that can be appeased only by a revolution in permanence.

Today, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist's work.

An artist is a person who has invented an artist.