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The only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.

Ad Reinhardt

I tried to oppose the academic to the marketplace.
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Academic Desire Marketplace Opposite Tried Try Wish
Art is art. Everything else is everything else.
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Art Avant-Garde Everything Simplify
The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea… The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.
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Art Business Idea Selling Spectacle Themselves Ugliest
The job at Brooklyn is interesting because Brooklyn reflects what happened to university art departments everywhere. It might be the worst department now, and yet at one point it was the best in the country.
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Art Country Department Happened Job Reflect University
Now almost every artist outside of New York is connected with some school or some museum school, and even in New York the majority are.
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Art Artist Connected Country Exhibition Museum Outside Painting School
So now our department is the worst department, partly because it has the worst facilities.
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Department Everything Facility Now Worst
An artist who dedicates his life to art, burdens his art with his life, and his life with his art.
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Art Artist Burden Creative Dedicate Life
I taught a lot of art history, especially Chinese, Japanese, and Indian. But the painting classes came back. The nudes came back. Not so much the still lifes.
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Art Chinese Class Especially History Painting People Person
My painting represents the victory of the forces of darkness and peace over the powers of light and evil.
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Darkness Evil Force Light Painting Peace Power
The one object of fifty years of abstract art is to present art-as-art and as nothing else, to make it into the one thing it is only, separating and defining it more and more
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Abstract Art Fifty Nothing Present Year
Art is too serious to be taken seriously.
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Art Serious Seriously Taken
The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.
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Art Artist Businessman Painting Uglier
That’s an interesting fact when you take the idea of making money, making a living selling paintings. Only a dozen or two painters do that.
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Dozen Fact Idea Interesting Making Money Painting Selling Take
There is a black which is old and a black which is fresh. Lustrous black and dull black, black in sunlight and black in shadow.
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Black Dull Fresh Lustrous Shadow Sunlight
I like the idea of the museum world and the university-academic situation where artists talk to each other or where artists or art students study with artists.
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Art Artist Idea Museums Situation Talk University
As an artist I would like to eliminate the symbolic pretty much, for black is interesting not as a color but as a non-color and as the absence of color.
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Artist Color Eliminate Interesting Much Pretty Symbolic

The only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.

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The only and one way to say what abstract art or art-as-art is, is to say what it is not.

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Popular Authors

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