[Art] would have helped us survive in the Pleistocene - in the period, say, 1.6 million years ago until fairly recently. The kind of imaginative abil….

I think the idea of the social construction of beauty - this idea that beauty is simply whatever culture or society says it is - is on the run. Of co….

The continuous capacity of genius to surpass understanding remains a human constant..

Solemnity and a complete absence of irony also mark kitsch..

I try to figure out - intellectually, philosophically, psychologically - what the experience of beauty is..

The arts, like language, emerged spontaneously and universally in similar forms across cultures, employing imaginative and intellectual capacities th….

Beauty is nature’s way of acting at a distance..

Dumbing down takes many forms: art that is good for you, museums that flatter you, universities that increase your self-esteem. Culture, after all, i….

Why do humans make art? It's how we evolved..

Once kitsch is interpreted ironically, it ceases to be kitsch.

It's a grave mistake in publishing, whether you're talking about Internet or print publication, to try to play to a limited repertoire of established….

A few years ago, Bill Gates was boasting that we'll soon have sensors which will turn on the music that we like or show on the walls the paintings we….

Salvador Dali has been called kitsch, but, although some of this work may be grotesque, its brazenly self-conscious bad taste saves it from being tru….