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Artists Against Critics

Throughout the centuries, artists and critics have had a combative history, a relationship fraught with tension. Neither party seems to see eye-to-eye. These artists have directly rebuked their critics allowing their art to speak for itself.

"A critic is someone who meddles with something that is none of his business." - Paul Gauguin

Mahana No Atua (Day of the God), 1894

"I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is." - Jean-Michel Basquiat

Flexible, 1984

"Do not be an art critic, but paint, therein lies salvation." - Paul Cézanne

Mont Sainte-Victoire, 1885-87

"Let my enemies devour each other." - Salvador Dalí

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), 1936

"I have generally found that persons who had studied painting least were the best judges of it." - William Hogarth

The Tête à Tête, 1743 ~ From, Marriage à la Mode

"People discuss my art and pretend to understand as if it were necessary to understand, when it's simply necessary to love." - Monet

L'Allée de Rosiers, 1920-1922

"I paint what I see and not what others like to see." - Manet

At the Café, 1879


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