With art criticism it's difficult to discuss beauty, to assess it, because there's always the possibility that we're insane.

The dominant problem of pictorial art since the nineteen-fifties is photography, and, by extension, film and video. The basilisk eye of the camera has withered the pride of handworked mediums. Painting survives on a case-by-case basis, its successes amounting to special exemptions from a verdict of history.

Art is always subject to change in a moment by somebody who's strong enough to shed new light on it.

Your medium has to be alive to you, no matter what you do.

It's possible I am the only art critic that a lot of people read. And maybe Robert Hughes, if he's still writing.

Artists are expected to talk about their work but writers aren't expected to talk about their writing.

All artists and creative people are basically unhappy people. If you were happy, that would mean you were content with the world as it was and why would you ever want to change it?