A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion.

Nevertheless, what was made in the hope of transforming the world need not be rejected because it failed to do so – otherwise, one would also have to throw out a good deal of the greatest painting and poetry of the nineteenth century. An objective political failure can still work as a model of intellectual affirmation or dissent.

What does one prefer? An art that struggles to change the social contract, but fails? Or one that seeks to please and amuse, and succeeds?

Art grows out of modes of perception that make you feel and think...that hooks on to something deep-running in our natures.

There is virtue in virtuosity, especially today, when it protects us from the tedious spectacle of ineptitude.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

It was van Gogh's madness that prevented him from working; the paintings themselves are ineffably sane, if sanity is to be defined in terms of exact judgment of ends and means and the power of visual analysis.