Judging Art Quotes & Sayings

I think competition in any kind of activity like music, art, literature - anything that's not done with a timer - is actually impossible. So, in effect, what you're doing is you're entering the lottery. You're hoping that you play well (and that) you play your best on the day that you're heard, and you're hoping that the people who are judging will like what you do. — Emanuel Ax

True works of art contain their own theory and give us the measurement according to which we should judge them. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The function of criticism is the reeducation of perception of works of art? The conception that its business is to appraise, to judge in the legal and moral sense, arrests the perception of those who are influenced by the criticism that assumes this task. — John Dewey

The art of communicating is to speak with a non judging sensitivity and mean it rather than impulsively verbalizing whatever feelings arise; there's no better way to make a point. — Judith Orloff

Ultimately, the salon, Steffens noted, helped change the public perception of Greenwich Village, although hardly in the manner Dodge had hoped. What had been a neighborhood better known for cheap rents and no shortage of decrepit apartments was becoming almost chic, a kind of Latin Quarter in Manhattan. Small theaters and art galleries sprang up, and midtown shoppers and tourists took the time to cruise through the Village for a look at the new trendsetters. Steffens did not recall it as being exceptionally fashionable back in 1911, judging his own lifestyle to be "Bohemian, but not the fake sort." If it was not fake, it was hardly genuine, either. Steffens was not about to starve in Greenwich Village. — Peter Hartshorn

It is only with the best judges that the highest works of art would lose none of their honor by being seen in their rudiments. — John Frederick Boyes

Do I believe in an old man in the clouds with a white beard judging us mortals with a moral code from one to ten? Good Lord no, my sweet Elly, I do not! I would have been cast out from this life years ago with my tatty history. Do I believe in a mystery; the unexplained phenomenon that is life itself? The greater something that illuminates inconsequence in our lives; that gives us something to strive for as well as the humility to brush ourselves down and start all over again? Then yes, I do. It is the source of art, of beauty, of love, and proffers the ultimate goodness to mankind. That to me is God. That to me is life. That is what I believe in. — Sarah Winman

O time! whose verdicts mock our own, the only righteous judge art thou! — Thomas William Parsons

Art is more like real estate than stocks. Some Warhols are like studio apartments in midblock buildings with northern exposures, while other Warhols are penthouse properties with 360-degree views. A share of Cisco, however, is always just a share of Cisco. Judging — Sarah Thornton

Art is like therapy; what comes up is what comes up. It may be dark, but that's what comes up. You may want to keep some of it in a drawer but never judge it. — Nick Bantock

Lack of personal morality plus "politically correct" prohibition against judging others' behavior and naming immorality sets up a social environment receptive and vulnerable to a tyrannical government. A tyrannical government transforms every aspect of the cultural day-to-day lives of everyone under its control across all areas from the educational and penal systems to fine art and entertainment dictates right on down to housing regulations and food availabilities. — Alexandra York

But you begin to feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all - or is not even possible. The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance. — Philip Guston

If some people are right, artists are put into this world not to practice their art, but to talk about it. And judging by the flattering invitations many a humble climber will receive to pontificate from the lowest rung but one of the ladder, humanity is in a dangerously receptive frame of mind, and artists a race devoid of either modesty or sense of humor. — Ethel Smyth

To the average eye, my bedroom was a complete disaster. The floor was hardly visible with all of the empty soda bottles, chip bags, and piles of clothes covering it. The rustic nightstand by my bed was so cluttered with papers, more soda bottles, notebooks, and hoodies that it looked like a pile of contemporary art. And my bed? It was just a pile of dark blue blankets and pillows scattered on an old mattress. What's the point in making your bed, anyway? You're just gonna mess it up and unmake it at the end of the day. Why even bother? My bedroom might look like a mess to anyone else, but to me, it was my own personal oasis. I liked it just the way it was. I never bought the whole saying, "A cluttered room is a cluttered mind." Me? Cluttered? Nah. More like creative. The more cluttered your room is, the more creative you are. And judging by my room, I must be pretty creative. I — Savannah Ostler

Aristotle was the first accurate critic and truest judge nay, the greatest philosopher the world ever had; for he noted the vices of all knowledges, in all creatures, and out of many men's perfections in a science he formed still one Art. — Ben Jonson

Bad critics judge a work of art by comparing it to pre-existing theories. They always go wrong when confronted with a masterpiece because masterpieces make their own rules. — Robert Anton Wilson

I wanted to represent the world as a temporary art installation continuously changing. I wanted to consider it unreal and unfinished, judge and transform it, a possibility that only art gives us. — Olivo Barbieri

Art itself is essentially ethical; because every true work of art must have a beauty or grandeur of some kind, and beauty and grandeur cannot be comprehended by the beholder except through the moral sentiment. The eye is only a witness; it is not a judge. The mind judges what the eye reports to it; therefore, whatever elevates the moral sentiment to the contemplation of beauty and grandeur is in itself ethical. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

None but those who have learned the art of subjecting their senses as well as reason to hypothetical systems can be persuaded by the most specious rhetorician that the lots of life are equal; yet it cannot be denied that every one has his peculiar pleasures and vexations, that external accidents operate variously upon different minds, and that no man can exactly judge from his own sensations what another would feel in the same circumstances. — Samuel Johnson

Judging art is like caging a bird. Instead of seeing it soar, you can only watch it flutter. — Ron Brackin

First of all, I should preface this by the observation that artists are not the best judges of what they've done and the word definitive does not belong, in my opinion, in any conversation about art. When somebody says it's the "definitive" something, I'm always recoiling. — Nicholas Meyer

It's not a science when you are judging art, but we'd be remiss to say you can't look at something and say, 'This is more well done than that.' — Matthew McConaughey

Bunglers and pedants judge art according to genre; they approve of this and dismiss that genre, but instead of genres, the open-minded connoisseur appreciates only individual works. — Franz Grillparzer

In the visual arts, particularly painting, I distrust all those abstractions, those artificial constructions. I have a very simple way of judging them: if I can do them, they are not art. — F. Sionil Jose

Judging is acting on a limited knowledge. Learn the art of observing without evaluating. — Pushpa Rana

It is my conviction that the public always shows itself more honest in its spontaneity than do those who officially set themselves up as judges of works of art. — Igor Stravinsky

Anyone living, especially your peers, is a threat. You're judging them, they're judging you. This sort of criticism is as close to human nature as you can get. That can be a good thing sometimes. Jealously, rancor, competition, those can be good things in art. But it mostly puts you in a dangerous and disadvantageous position, and one that just takes away from you so much. — Raymond Pettibon

Art is completely subjective. It's up to the viewer to judge whether or not it has merit. — Ken Danby

Since there is no such thing as absolute rightness and truth, we always pursue the artificial, leading, human truth. We judge and make a truth that excludes other truths. Art plays a formative part in this manufacture of truth. — Gerhard Richter

It took me a long time to get to a position where I can feel that, with my art, I'm capable of saying what I need to say, and once I finish it, I can sit back and say, "It's done, and I'm okay with that. People can judge it good or bad, and it doesn't matter. I'm okay with it because I said something I needed to say." That's a really hard place to get, as an artist. — J.H. Wyman

Taste is the best judge. It is rare. Art only addresses itself to an excessively small number of individuals. — Paul Cezanne

It's hard as a person to just put your life out there for the world to judge. That's what music is and what you're supposed to do with the art, live and release it to the world. — Rapsody

There are artists with palettes and easels selling the kind of modern art that Soviet art critics used to critique with bulldozers. Judging by the paintings I saw, the Soviets were right the first time. — P. J. O'Rourke

One judges an epoch as much by its Art as by its customs. — Henri Gaudier-Brzeska

Another human being, yet another I had never seen before. What did this one know? Was he happy? Was he cruel? Did he worry? The more I stared at his face, the less I understood him. This is not unusual, the same procedure happens whenever I examine a person either on photograph or in reality: in my first glimpses I always think I can read someone fairly quickly, that the snap judgements I make are surely accurate, but the more I observe the less I understand, the more I realize how difficult the art of judging a person is. — Edward Carey

If God does exist, it's in music and in art, I think there's more spiritually in what I do than in a lot of religious groups judging, especially in the way they've treated me in the past couple of years. I've grown tired of talking about religion. It's time for me to move on. I'm trying to redefine the idea of spirituality and make it now such a bad word for myself, because I find that I sound really stupid saying it sometimes — Marilyn Manson

Wait a second, is a snooty book critic actually admitting to judging books by their covers? — Larry Correia

I guess the fact that they made something they could be proud of is more important than any prize ever could be. I can understand that. The beauty of the clothing itself is in the eye of the beholder. Judging art on a point system in the first place seems totally ridiculous! But since I grew up in such a competitive, point-awarding world, I wanted the grand prize more than anything. I wanted to be number one and get all the glory. Glory, huh ... how stupid! — Ai Yazawa

I have never cared very deeply about the actual taste of my work. Let its essential odor satisfy my mind and senses, and I am content. I rarely judge by the grosser test of actual gustation ... in cooking, to create a masterpiece for the nose alone - that is exquisite, that is Art! — Elinor Wylie