Quotes & Sayings About 20th Century Art

One of my inspirations, Harry Houdini, remains an icon of the art because he defied our primal fears. His demonstrations in the early 20th century, especially his escape from the Chinese water torture cell, represented triumph over suffocation, drowning, disorientation and helplessness. — Criss Angel

The prime motivation in making almost any film is success, because film is the art form of the 20th century. — Charlton Heston

In art and music, particularly in the 20th century, there was a big period there where for something to be called profound you had to not be able to understand it. — Joshua Bell

When I was a kid, I looked at art as a way of blending everything. One of my favorite composers is Wagner - who coined the term "gesamtkunstwerk," or "total art work." That's what was going on in the 19th century, and the 20th century just kept it going. — DJ Spooky

Film in the 20th century, it's the American art form, like jazz. — Martin Scorsese

The effort of painting from life has cost my models a great deal of physical discomfort, and cost me a great deal of money in model fees ... I have wanted to make the camera obsolete ... because, in my reading about early 20th century art, I found that the most frequently used argument made in favor of abstraction was that the camera made realist painting obsolete. — Philip Pearlstein

To be honest, I sort of feel like 'movie actor' isn't of this time. I love it. But it's a 20th-century art form. — Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Well Washington DC what are you going to do. They think the capitol steps are the state of the art in comedy. You try to drag them into the 20th century let alone the 21st and they refuse to come with you. — Harry Shearer

Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized. — James Wolcott

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century. — Marshall McLuhan

American musicians, instead of investigating ragtime, attempt to ignore it, or dismiss it with a contemptuous word. But that has always been the course of scholasticism in every branch of art. Whatever new thing the 'people' like is poohpoohed; whatever is 'popular' is spoken of as not worth the while. The fact is, nothing great or enduring, especially in music, has ever sprung full-fledged and unprecedented from the brain of any master; the best that he gives to the world he gathers from the hearts of the people, and runs it through the alembic of his genius. — James Weldon Johnson

With its fluctuating forms and needless decoration, fashion epitomizes the supposedly unproductive waste that inspired 20th-century technocrats to dream of central planning. It exists for no good reason. But that's practically a definition of art. — Virginia Postrel

Motion pictures are the art form of the 20th century, and one of the reasons is the fact that films are a slightly corrupted artform. They fit this century - they combine Art and business! — Roger Corman

At the beginning of the 20th century, the ambition of the great painters was to make paintings that were like music, which was then considered as the noblest art. — Brian Eno

The dominant theories of elite art and criticism in the 20th century grew out of a militant denial of human nature. One legacy is ugly, baffling, and insulting art. The other is pretentious and unintelligible scholarship. And they're surprised that people are staying away in droves? — Steven Pinker

The Futurists were an art movement in the early 20th century which basically glorified machines and the Industrial Revolution. — Britt Daniel

I was so absolutely riveted, I felt I was looking into the eyes of the artist. Art just closed the gap of time and space. The 16th century became as real to me as the 20th. It was something magical. — Betty Churcher

The Machiavelli of the 20th century will be an advertising man, his Prince, a textbook of the art and science of fooling all the people all the time. — Aldous Huxley

No matter how brilliant, amusing or intelligent the creek of abstraction, Dadaism, Minimalism and Conceptualism of the 20th century was, it didn't much affect the historical river of figuration. I predict that in 50 years and in 300 years, figurative art will still be strong and important. — Mark Kostabi

Movies were very important. The art-form of the 20th century. — Ray Manzarek

I mean, certainly it's the single biggest event, I think, in terms of popular entertainment, or art even, if you say that, of the 20th Century. It's been film. It's the 20th Century's real art form. — Sydney Pollack

Cinema is arguably the 20th century's most influential art form. — Beeban Kidron

My friend Josh Glenn compiles terrific lists of genre novels from the mid-20th century. His latest is a list of the ten best adventure novels of 1966. Josh also includes the cover art of early editions of the books, which are always much better than the art on newer editions. I want to read every book in this list! — Mark Frauenfelder

What you have now is a Hollywood that is pure poison. Hollywood was a central place in the history of art in the 20th century: it was human idealism preserved. And then, like any great place, it collapsed, and it collapsed into the most awful machinery in the world. — Emir Kusturica

The 20th century is a period defined by cultural and artistic movements. However, the 21st century creative-scape that we occupy now doesn't really have movements in the same way. Instead it's made up of diverse individuals working across various platforms simultaneously; art, architecture, film, music and literature. — Doug Aitken