Jeffrey Deitch Quotes

Dennis Hopper is one of the great American lives.

Part of my agenda has been to support art that engages life with people.

Street culture is punk, hip-hop, skateboarding, surfing, graffiti. It's like a massive global culture that is all tied together. But for so many years it was very geographic.

We're in a post-conceptual era where it's really the artist's idea and vision that are prized rather than the ability to master the crafts that support the work. Today, our understanding of an artist is closer to a philosopher than to a craftsman.

In the 1970s when I started in the art world, no self-respecting artist would have stood in line to try to get on a television show. It never would have happened.

Skateboarding, like graffiti, will never be tamed. No matter how much they monetize it, no matter how big it gets, no matter how many companies are putting millions and millions of dollars into marketing it, it's always going to be some Mexican kid on a corner in Echo Park that changes the rules of the game.

From 1940 to the present, the art world - and particularly Los Angeles - has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.

When skateboarding and punk merged, it really became a large teen subculture.

When you go out skating with your friends, you need one friend who knows how to take a good picture. Without the picture, there is no proof that you pulled the trick.

I started getting really curious about art. I read about the Dadaists and the Futurists and the Constructivists - those kind of movements which were reflecting the angst of the people of their times. Their work was trying to lead a movement. I began thinking about what was happening, with painting on the streets and painting on the trains as being similar but also coming from a real, pure space. It wasn't being created by academies. It was a spontaneous combustion of ideas that just happened.

Overall, I think any opportunity to expose people to art on a mass level - to have some kid in Oklahoma say to his mother, 'I want to be an artist' - is a good thing.

When I was looking at the Russian Constructivists, these agitprop artists actually painted on trains. It was a heavy influence. They were bringing art to the people, to the masses, and breaking it out of the clubbiness of the art world, which is a monolith.

I want to use whatever connections to get a super-outstanding Basquiat in the White House. It could be one of mine. It could be something that a friend owns.

One of the biggest things happening in the art world is this idea of expansion. No one embodies this aspect of what art is becoming better than James Franco.

Art dealing is when you're doing it as a business.

Sometimes you do a sound installation, and the first day or two it is very exciting. Then you are hearing this every day for a month, and it becomes like a torture.

There is a constant ebb and flow in art historical reputations. The reputation of even the greatest figures like Picasso are in flux.

Street skating, which is what I grew up with, is completely free of rules. You can do anything. When I see a skater go by, I think, What is this person going to do here? It's the same with people who write, who make music, who draw, who make movies. Creative people tend to have all of those different avenues in them.

I didn't know how to run a business. I was a terrible gallerist, the worst in history, possibly.

Ramp skating has become the most popular televised form of skating because they can constrain it. They can judge it based on what's happening within this box of a ramp.

Elizabeth Taylor is one of the great cultural icons. She is a part of our history and should be celebrated. ... This presentation is very special for the community, there are so many people who want to understand this side of Elizabeth Taylor.

After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture.