Walter Darby Bannard

We learn to lie by believing words rather than experience.

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

Art is there for nourishment, not explication.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Most 'profound truths' are just timely ideas.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Anything is OK in art if the art turns out OK.

— Walter Darby Bannard

The more freedom artists have to do what they want to do, the more they do what other artists are doing.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Art flows more easily when you are not thinking about what 'should' be in it or how it 'should' be done. The…

— Walter Darby Bannard

The struggle to be original hates conformity, but the struggle to be better disregards it, or takes advantage of it to build…

— Walter Darby Bannard

Don't apologize, justify or rationalize bad art or bad writing. If you do, you are part of it.

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

Good new art may not look like art. Inspiration doesn't follow style, it creates it.

— 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

The art consensus is not criteria, it is convenience.

— 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

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

When you 'break all the barriers' you get a pile of rubble.

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

— Walter Darby Bannard

Postmodernism is Modernism with Alzheimer's.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When making a painting, only one thing counts: what you do next.

— Walter Darby Bannard

In ART as in Life the Best Way to REMEDY mistakes is to take advantage of them.

— Walter Darby Bannard

An ivory tower is a fine place as long as the door is open.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Convention and restriction release inhibition and provoke the imagination.

— Walter Darby Bannard

A critic without a good eye is a eunuch in a harem.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Dogmatism spreads its roots in the fertile soil of uncertainty.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Most people find facts irritating. Facts interfere with their systems of denial.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When art writing seems incomprehensible, chances are it is.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Always let intuitive perception precede analysis.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When good ideas get put to bad use, it is the fault of the user, not the idea.

— Walter Darby Bannard

One needs to be right before getting righteous.

— Walter Darby Bannard

Making art is like swimming underwater in a blindfold.

— Walter Darby Bannard

When you have made a good painting, don't do another like it, but remember the process, what you did, what you were…

— Walter Darby Bannard

Good art looks new because the artist has recombined something old to make something better.

— Walter Darby Bannard

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

Conceptual art' is an oxymoron. Concepts are articulations of fact or supposition, not attributes of quality.

— Walter Darby Bannard