88 Quotes by Robert Hughes

I have never been against new art as such; some of it is good, much is crap, most is somewhere in between.

We are now exposed to more images in a day than anyone in the 14th century would have known in a lifetime. [...] Most of it is garbage. Most of it needs excising. Even if we’re fearful that we might be missing something. We are probably not. We have to discard. We have to throw things away, cleanse the doors of our perception and work out what is worth looking at, what is worth remembering, what are the images that matter, what will we retain.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt.

The new job of art is to sit on the wall and get more expensive.

It was the basilica of gossip, the Vatican of inside dope.

It was a secular cathedral, dedicated to the rites of travel.

A determined soul will do more with a rusty monkey wrench than a loafer will accomplish with all the tools in a machine shop.

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

Nothing they design ever gets in the way of a work of art