Walter Darby Bannard

When you make the obvious mysterious, then the mysterious becomes unavailable.

— Walter Darby Bannard

There's a big difference between grabbing attention and rewarding attention.

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

Big minds have big ideas. Small minds use big ideas to justify bad ideas.

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

Art is not truth. Truth conforms to reality. Art invents reality.

— Walter Darby Bannard

You don't have to be a cave man to appreciate Lascaux.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Good art has everything you need to know about it in the work, not on a wall label. Art is here to…

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

What is sublime? / the artist said. / I haven't time / to be well read. / To be sub lime /…

— Walter Darby Bannard

Science is a matter of adjusting language to explain material reality. Art is a matter of adjusting material reality to create a…

— Walter Darby Bannard

Talent is like a seed which needs fertile soil. There is no less talent now, there is less fertile soil to nourish…

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

To an art historian a Giotto is a 14th Century painting. To an artist it was painted yesterday. We free ourselves from…

— Walter Darby Bannard

Nothing is as hopeless as trying to justify art in words.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Without the eye, the head is blind. Without the head, the eye is adrift.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Art is making something better without knowing what better is until you make it.

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

When anything can be art, art is not much of anything.

— Walter Darby Bannard

We learn to lie by believing words rather than experience.

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

Don't burden art with words and ideas. Art comes from a deeper place.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Originality is way overrated. To make, you need to take. All great artists do.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When imitation goes over big, it isn't imitation, it is a trend.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Assumptions are usually presumptuous but often correct.

— Walter Darby Bannard

There are too many artists, too many dealers and too much art.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Art that wants to be felt does not have the need to be admired.

— Walter Darby Bannard

The first duty of intelligence is to recognize the obvious.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Postmodernism is silly and joyless at the same time.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Complete freedom debilitates art but reveals much about character.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Too much freedom inhibits choice. Constructive narrowness clarifies choice.

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

Limitation of means is a precondition of excellence. Creative freedom chooses its limitations. Destructive freedom rejects them heedlessly.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Very few people ever understand art. If you are lucky, they will buy it for the wrong reasons.

— Walter Darby Bannard

If you learn something too well, it will get in the way of your perception of reality.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Art makes you reinvent the wheel with regularity. If you don't, art gets bored and slips away.

— Walter Darby Bannard