Mason Cooley Art Quotations

Art begins in imitation and ends in innovation.

People believe that photographs are true and therefore cannot be art.

Avant-garde art jousts with propriety, but takes care never to unseat it.

Now defined as art, the totem has lost cult, taboo, and custom.

The nudes of art are not so distant from pornography as prudish pedants pretend.

Every work of art changes its predecessors.

Art can make chaos seductive.

Self-deception is nature; hypocrisy is art.

Spirituality now wanders from sex to drugs to art to revolution to violence--whatever seems to promise deliverance from the quotidian.

New York is full of abandoned churches. A Godless city, but full of superstitions on every subject--art, money, sex, food, health.

In youth, love and art. In age, investments and antiques.

Unlike art and sex, money always arouses interest.

In love as in art, good technique helps.

All history and art are against us, but we still expect happiness in love.

A work of art is an echo chamber which repeats what people say about it.

Art chooses its constraints.

Rule of art: let half-blind purpose lead you.

Critics are more committed to the rules of art than artists are.

The Muses inspire art and pretend not to notice when Mammon buys it.

We worship the aesthetic, but we do not have faith in it.

In the great cities, winter glitters with art and feasting. But poetry, the country cousin, sees only the dearth of the fields.

Lying just for the fun of it is either art or pathology.

Art seduces, but does not exploit.

If you are going to break a Law of Art, make the crime interesting.

In art, a dress is never just a dress; nor in life either.

Amazing that the human race has taken enough time out from thinking about food or sex to create the arts and sciences.