Politically Incorrect Art Quotes

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A really good subject should be in the first place interesting; that is, it ought to arrest our attention and set us thinking. It ought, if possible, to be beautiful, and it ought to more or less explain itself; that is, one should be able to guess at the general nature of the incident without having recourse to an elaborate written explanation.

John Collier, A Manual of Oil Painting

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[...] the old masters went on painting the same narrow range of subjects one after another; while the moderns, in their efforts to be original, generally succeed in getting extremely bad subjects.

John Collier, A Manual of Oil Painting

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How is it possible to make an interesting picture out of a commonplace person in the costume of the present day? It must be acknowledged that in some cases the problem is hopeless. There are some portraits which, at the best, can only be interesting to artists on account of their technical merits, but which to the general public must be simply ugly and dull.

John Collier, A Manual of Oil Painting

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Many bids for fame are made by men who, having nothing to say, invent a new language to say it in, and hope that their jargon may be mistaken by originality, as it not frequently is by the immature critic and the modish amateur.

Solomon J. Solomon, The Practice of Oil Painting and Drawing