Quotes & Sayings About Collecting Art

as if any one but a fool imagined that he could compress a thing like art or religion or science into an epigram which could be lifted from its context and, so lifted, continue to make sense. Giving and collecting definitions is not philosophy but a parlour game. The writer's definition of religion (as of art and so forth) is coextensive with this entire book, and will nowhere be found in smaller compass. Nor will it be found in its completeness there; for no book is wholly self-explanatory, but solicits the co-operation of a reasonably thoughtful and instructed reader. Religion, — R.G. Collingwood

Art collecting has traditionally been the domain of wealthy individuals in search of rewards beyond the purely financial. — James Surowiecki

No objects of value are worth risking the priceless experience of waking up one more day. — Jack Smith

When museums are left with so little money that their future is in the hands of private donors, then they are unable to develop their own signatures by collecting themselves. On the other hand, though, I think we should also celebrate the fact that there is a lot of art that lives outside of, or on the outskirts of, the art market - and it is doing quite well. — Olafur Eliasson

Journalism is the art of collecting varying kinds of information (commonly called news) which a few people possess and of transmitting it to a much larger number of people who are supposed to desire to share it. — Henry R. Luce

For me, collecting is sort of a natural extension of being an art dealer, because if you don't want to collect the artist, then you probably shouldn't be representing them. — Larry Gagosian

Meeting and talking to the artist adds a special element to collecting contemporary art that makes the work an irreplaceable treasure rather than just another possession. — Ernest West Basden

I would begin by collecting lithographs and etchings. It's a way of coming in and benefiting from real quality art. Even younger artists make wonderful prints. Prints can become very valuable. That's how I began collecting. — Arne Glimcher

I've been collecting art for much of my adult life. I started around 1960. And my wife and I really enjoy art a great deal. We don't have a lot of money, so we have works on paper, but we enjoy them a great deal. — Eric Kandel

Cities, Barber notes, "collect garbage and collect art rather than collecting votes or collecting allies. They put up buildings and run buses rather than putting up flags and running political parties. They secure the flow of water rather than the flow of arms. They foster education and culture in place of national defense and patriotism. They promote collaboration, not exceptionalism."24 — Michael Shermer

The lure in art collecting and its financial rewards, not counting for a moment its aesthetic, cultural and intellectual rewards, is like the trust in paper money: it makes no sense when you really think about it. New artistic images are so vulnerable to opinion that it wouldn't take much more than a whim for a small group of collectors to decide that a contemporary artist was not so wonderful anymore, was so last year. — Steve Martin

I'm very much involved in art. I started buying art a few years ago and really like the work of T.C. Cannon, who is a native American artist. Then I was introduced to Soviet-era Russian impressionism and started collecting that, especially Gely Korzhev. — Ronnie Dunn

I love art that haunts me, that stays with me, that is left embedded in my mind. I don't really think there is any use for owning or collecting art; it is more about remembering and preserving it in the minds eye and allowing it into your cultural DNA. — Doug Aitken

Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else. — Albert Camus

Yeah, I fancy women big time ... I check them out more than I check men out. Maybe I would want to sleep with a woman ... Not Beyonce, although I like the look of her, I don't think she's that dirty. — Billie Piper

When I was your age, art was a lonely thing: no galleries, no collecting, no critics, no money. We didn't have mentors. We didn't have parents. We were alone. But it was a great time, because we had nothing to lose and a vision to gain. — John Logan

Not that I am totally obsessed with merchantry!" said Glasswort Groof as she led them in an artful circle round the Market. "Goblins are well-rounded, though you'd never think it from the dastard tales folk tell of us. For example, I enjoy stamp collecting as well as haggling. The stamps that pay our letters' way Above are works of art, practically bigger than the envelope! I've an early Mallow three-kisser with a rampant rhinocentaur on it in pewter paint. Pride of my collection. And it goes without saying I'm quite the gardener. Goblin vegetables pack twice the punch of fruit with half the delicacy of a simpering little apricot. Soon turnips will be all the rage! — Catherynne M Valente

People were more interested in the phenomena than the art itself. This, combined with the growing interest in collecting art as an investment and the resultant boom in the art market, made it a difficult time for a young artist to remain sincere without becoming cynical. — Keith Haring

[On amassing art for her collection:] My motto was 'Buy a picture a day' and I lived up to it. — Peggy Guggenheim

Art is at least in part a way of collecting information about the universe. — Rebecca West

I am only limited by the amount of life I have left to capture the ideas I am already working on. Another problem is that I am not sure if I would rather create or collect art. Collecting art is another passion of mine. — Richard MacDonald

In comics, you have to imagine what happens. I really loved it; I loved collecting. I loved following the adventures and figuring out what was going to happen next. I was a huge X-Men fan; I was a huge Spider-Man fan, and, to large degree, I remain one. It's literature for me; it's art. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

I've been collecting since college, .. When we're children, we're taught to draw in the lines, use certain colors. In this art, the talent and the creativity we had as children hasn't been squashed. The early stuff is still there. — Beverly L. Kaye

[there are] two kinds of things the nature of which it would be quite wonderful to grasp by means of a systematic art ...
the first consists in seeing together things that are scattered about everywhere and collecting them into one kind, so that by defining each thing we can make clear the subject of any instruction we wish to give ...
[the second], in turn, is to be able to cut up each kind according to its species along its natural joints, and to try not to splinter any part, as a bad butcher might do ...
phaedrus, i myself am a lover of these divisions and collections, so that i may be able to think and to speak. — Plato

In the last 20 years of collecting contemporary African art, I have been bombarded by incredible shapes and colors that I now want to translate into clothes. — Jean Pigozzi

Art provides us with clues about how to live our lives more fully ... about how creating, collecting, and even just appreciating art can make daily living a masterpiece. — Michael Kimmelman

I started collecting art ... simply because I wanted pictures to hang on the wall. I noticed what a difference a picture could make to the ambience of a room, and indeed how shifting work around could change a room's whole feeling. — Michael Audain

When I was around 19 years old, working in the college library, I was talking to a friend of mine and this older woman interrupted and said "You're too young to know about Billie Holiday." My response was "I'm too young to know about Shakespeare, too ... should I not read him? — Wanda Lea Brayton

I've enjoyed collecting. I've enjoyed art ever since - I'll tell you when - I went to Columbia. I went to the Met, and I saw Poussin's 'Rape of the Sabine Women', and it's this incredible, epic, great, great painting. — Daniel S. Loeb

If you can imagine someone surpassing you, you should do it yourself. — Paul Graham

I found so-called great art too pompous, too stiff. What at this time was called minor art was freer, more imaginative, more open to all kinds of unorthodox expression, all kinds of daring in the handling of materials, and I preferred to surround myself with this type of art than with the great collectors' pieces. I had always in my mind that I was collecting for learning. — Jacques Lipchitz

Know my name is lost, By treason's tooth bare-gnawn and canker-bit; Yet am I noble as the adversary I come to cope. — William Shakespeare

Some prescient American collectors, including Vicki and Kent Logan and Mera and Donald Rubell, began collecting Chinese art before 2000 with a genuine passion, but as the auction prices exploded everyone was beating a path to the galleries and artist studios in China. It became the 'China thing.' — Arne Glimcher

The next time you are called to suffer, pay attention. It may be the closest you'll ever get to God. — Max Lucado