Ed Ruscha
[Artist, b. 1937, Omaha, Nebraska, lives in Los Angeles.]

 Above all, the photographs I use are not “arty” in any sense of the word. I think photography is dead as fine art; its only place is in the commercial world, for technical or information purposes. 

Friedrich Nietzsche
[Philosopher, b. 1844, Rocken, Prussia, d. 1900, Weimar, Germany.]

 Artists should not see things as they are: they should see them fuller, simpler, stronger: To this end, however, a kind of youthfulness, of vernality, a sort of perpetual elation, must be peculiar to their lives. (Copied by Edward Weston in his quotation file.) 

Edmund Teske
[Photographer, b. 1911, Chicago, Illinois, d. 1996, Los Angeles.]

 Art is a matter of picking up on the mundane and giving it form at a higher level of expression. 

Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]

 Nobody knows what art is, and it can’t be taught. It’s the mind and the talent of the eye of the individual who is operating the machine that produces what comes out of it. 

Richard Avedon
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 2004, San Antonio, Texas.]

 I think all art is about control—the encounter between control and the uncontrollable. 

Sol LeWitt
[Artist and theorist, b. 1928, Hartford, Connecticut, d. 2007, New York.]

 What the work of art looks like isn’t too important. 

Kermit the Frog
[Muppet and Philosopher, b. 1955, WRC-TV, Washington, D.C., lives in Hollywood.]

 How important are the visual arts in our society? I feel strongly that the visual arts are of vast and incalculable importance. Of course I could be prejudiced. I am a visual art. 

Arnold Newman
[Photographer, b. 1918, New York, d. 2006, New York.]

 Those who call themselves art photographers are pompous, arrogant egoists. 
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