Popular Art Quotes

“...indeed it is very true that, just as the finest air in the world is vulgarized beyond all bearing once the public has taken to hum it and the street organs to play it, so the work of art that has appealed to the sham connoisseurs, that is admired by the uncritical, that is not content to rouse the enthusiasm of only a chosen few, becomes for this very reason, in the eyes of the elect, a thing polluted, commonplace, almost repulsive.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against the Grain

“Popular art is the dream of society; it does not examine itself.”
― Margaret Atwood

“Diana Carmody is a self-taught artist whose work explores the contradictions in nature and in the landscapes of the Outer Cape, where she makes her home. In still lifes and seascapes, Carmody forces the viewer to consider the spaces between the tranquility of sea and sky, the beauty of dunes and marsh grass, and the potent violence of wind and rain, thunder and lightning, the gallery's brochure about her said. In her work, nature is restless, motion is constant, the threat of danger implicit in the churn of the waves or darkening sky or an animal lurking at the border. Her work invites the viewer to consider her own expectations about safety and beauty. ("I don't know what it means, exactly," Diana confided to Michael, who'd replied, "It means they can charge five thousand dollars.")”
― Jennifer Weiner, That Summer