"The paradox in the evolution of French painting from Courbet to Cézanne is how it was brought to the verge of abstraction in and by its very effort to transcribe visual appearance with ever greater fidelity."

“The main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda, that kitsch is more pliable to this end.”

“Complete honesty has nothing to do with "purity" or naivety. The full truth is unattainable to naivety, and the completely honest artist is not pure in heart.”

“The superior artist is the one who knows how to be influenced.”

“It has become apparent that art can have a startling impact without really being or saying anything startling — or new. The character itself of being startling, spectacular, or upsetting has become conventionalized, part of safe good taste.”

“Realistic, naturalistic art had dissembled the medium, using art to conceal art; Modernism used art to call attention to art.”

“the dividing line between the painterly and the linear is by no means a hard and fast one.”