Denis Dutton

Salvador Dali has been called kitsch, but, although some of this work may be grotesque, its brazenly self-conscious bad taste saves it…

— Denis Dutton

The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant.

— Denis Dutton

I have seen journals with good financial backing and editorial support die because they looked so bad nobody wanted to publish them.

— Denis Dutton

A few years ago, Bill Gates was boasting that we'll soon have sensors which will turn on the music that we like…

— Denis Dutton

The arts, like language, emerged spontaneously and universally in similar forms across cultures, employing imaginative and intellectual capacities that had clear survival…

— Denis Dutton

Beauty is nature’s way of acting at a distance.

— Denis Dutton

Dumbing down takes many forms: art that is good for you, museums that flatter you, universities that increase your self-esteem. Culture, after…

— Denis Dutton

Why do humans make art? It's how we evolved.

— Denis Dutton

I try to figure out - intellectually, philosophically, psychologically - what the experience of beauty is.

— Denis Dutton

It's a grave mistake in publishing, whether you're talking about Internet or print publication, to try to play to a limited repertoire…

— Denis Dutton

Solemnity and a complete absence of irony also mark kitsch.

— Denis Dutton

Once kitsch is interpreted ironically, it ceases to be kitsch

— Denis Dutton

[Art] would have helped us survive in the Pleistocene - in the period, say, 1.6 million years ago until fairly recently. The…

— Denis Dutton

My parents were in the book business, my brothers still run the Dutton bookstores in Los Angeles, and I've been interested in…

— Denis Dutton

I think the idea of the social construction of beauty - this idea that beauty is simply whatever culture or society says…

— Denis Dutton

It's clear on the one hand that an education enriches and informs a response to beauty, even makes it possible in esoteric…

— Denis Dutton