Top 90 Walter Darby Bannard Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “One needs to be right before getting righteous.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

52. “Dogmatism spreads its roots in the fertile soil of uncertainty.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

53. “When anyone can produce dreck or publish gibberish, and not only get away with it but be celebrated for it, the discipline is no longer a discipline, and it will get no respect.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

54. “It matters little if something is ‘craft’ or ‘art.’ The question is only this: does it give me pleasure?”

— Walter Darby Bannard

55. “Asking art to express ideas is like asking a Sumo wrestler to play charades.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

56. “In art there is no absolute good or bad, but it is absolute that there is good and bad.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

57. “There is no regional art. The only region left is the art magazine.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

58. “Art may be for the privileged few but they have earned the privilege and deny it to no one.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

59. “Power is like money. Some know how to get it; few know how to use it.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

60. “You don’t have to be a cave man to appreciate Lascaux.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

61. “When imitation goes over big, it isn’t imitation, it is a trend.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

62. “A critic without a good eye is a eunuch in a harem.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

63. “We learn to lie by believing words rather than experience.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

64. “Postmodernism does not facilitate better art. It rationalizes inferior art by wrapping it in words – a suit of armor with nobody inside.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

65. “The art consensus is not criteria, it is convenience.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

66. “Art is too popular. If plumbing was as popular as art is we would have amateur plumbers running around brandishing wrenches and Roto-Rooters, climbing in and out of sewers and writing gibberish about pipe systems. And none of our our toilets would work.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

67. “Art rides in on pleasure.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

68. “Good new art may not look like art. Inspiration doesn’t follow style, it creates it.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

69. “Postmodernism lives in the academy, where words abandon reality to serve ambition, and reputations rise on hot air.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

70. “Nothing is as hopeless as trying to justify art in words.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

71. “Trying to be original is futile. If you have no place to go, stay home and cook.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

72. “There is no best way to make art, but there are a lot of better ways.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

73. “Good art, no matter how simple or casual-seeming, always carries a high density of choice.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

74. “When art writing seems incomprehensible, chances are it is.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

75. “When anything can be art, art is not much of anything.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

76. “Writing about art is only useful when it leads to the experience of art.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

77. “Postmodernism is silly and joyless at the same time.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

78. “We must turn away from work that replaces experience and pleasure with explanation.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

79. “Great art does not break with the past. It breaks with the present by emulating the best of the past.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

80. “Convention and restriction release inhibition and provoke the imagination.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

81. “Live to paint, don’t paint to live.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

82. “When realistic images or patterns are seen in an abstract painting, they are often parallels brought about by processes in painting which echo processes in nature.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

83. “A clear idea about the nature of quality in art will always result in inferior art tailored to it.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

84. “Don’t explain, enjoy.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

85. “Good art has everything you need to know about it in the work, not on a wall label. Art is here to take us beyond language.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

86. “Don’t apologize, justify or rationalize bad art or bad writing. If you do, you are part of it.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

87. “Art is there for nourishment, not explication.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

88. “Whether something is called art is beside the point. What counts is what happens when you ask it to actually be art.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

89. “Art makes you reinvent the wheel with regularity. If you don’t, art gets bored and slips away.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

90. “Part of history is facts. The other part is what we find easier to believe.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

91. “Most art is just surface noise.”

— Walter Darby Bannard

92. “There are too many artists, too many dealers and too much art.”

— Walter Darby Bannard