Sarah Thornton Quotes

The term bohemian has a bad reputation because it's allied to myriad clichés, but Parisians originally adopted the term, associated with nomadic Gypsies, to describe artists and writers who stayed up all night and ignored the pressures of the industrial world.

~ Sarah Thornton

Although the art world reveres the unconventional, it is rife with conformity. Artists make work that looks like art and behave in ways that enhance stereotypes. Curators pander to the expectations of their peers and their museum boards. Collectors run in herds to buy work by a handful of fashionable painters. Critics stick their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing so as to get it right. Originality is not always rewarded, but some people take real risks and innovate, which gives a raison d'être to the rest.

~ Sarah Thornton

The contemporary art world is what Tom Wolfe would call a statusphere. It's structured around nebulous and often contradictory hierarchies of fame, credibility, imagined historical importance, institutional affliction, perceived intelligence, wealth, and attribution such as the size of one's art collection.

~ Sarah Thornton

I'm an atheist, but I believe in art. I go to galleries like my mother went to church. It helps me understand the way I live.

~ Sarah Thornton