Robert Hughes Quotes

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

“A Gustave Courbet portrait of a trout has more death in it than Rubens could get in a whole Crucifixion.”

“Art grows out of modes of perception that make you feel and think. That hooks on to something deep-running in our natures.”

“Confidence is the prize given to the mediocre.”

“In art there is no progress, only fluctuations of intensity.”

“Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.”

“One gets tired of the role critics are supposed to have in this culture: it's like being the piano player in a wh*rehouse; you don't have any control over the action going on upstairs.”

“The greater the artist, the greater the doubt; perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.”

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

“Popular in our time, unpopular in his. So runs the stereotype of rejected genius.”