I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.

Visiting a popular exhibition or art gallery, start at the end and go backwards - the crowds are always at the beginning.

Treat a work of art like a prince: let it speak to you first.

One of the best things about paintings is their silence - which prompts reflection and random reverie.

It's clever, but is it art?

Most people don't do something seminal. I've done it twice: with my tent and my bed. Picasso did it with Cubism.

The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art's audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artists and the bafflement of the public.

You meet rich people and you hang around with them, and one night they've had a few drinks and they say 'I'll buy it!' Then they tell their friends, 'You must have this person's work, darling,' and that's all you need. That's all it takes. Get it?'

A work of art that contains theories is like an object on which the price tag has been left.

There's one sure method of making peace. You've only got to take the Tsar, the Emperor William, the King of England, the President of the Republic, the King of Italy, and the other kings of belligerent countries, and put them in front of a bad picture. They'll all promptly unite in adoring it. They'll fall into each other's arms, and peace will reign.