Jeffrey Deitch Quotes

“I believe that an art exhibition can be engaging, fun and deeply intellectually satisfying and serious. These are not contradictory concepts in art.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

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

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“Celebrity has become, for better or worse, an art form. An artist can use themselves as a medium to become a celebrity as a walking work of art.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

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

— Jeffrey Deitch

“Disney is our contemporary landscape. The best art will reflect that and challenge you. Disney comforts you, whereas the best art shakes up your comfort level and perception.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

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

— Jeffrey Deitch

Art, film, fashion, music are all going on and interacting simultaneously. And L.A. is very receptive to that fusion.

— Jeffrey Deitch

Dennis Hopper is one of the great American lives.

— Jeffrey Deitch

Effective fund-raising is based on relationships.

— Jeffrey Deitch

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

— Jeffrey Deitch

“Many of the museum directors who make an impact personally curate exhibitions.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

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

— Jeffrey Deitch

“What I hope is I'll eventually be seen as an actual individual, not as some abstraction - an art dealer running a museum.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

Every day you run into artists on the streets in SoHo or other creative people you want to do something with. There's nothing to match that chance encounter.

— Jeffrey Deitch

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.

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

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.

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“Graffiti doesn't exist unless someone got a photo, because it's gone immediately.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

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

— Jeffrey Deitch

“We use the term pop in the art world, as in Pop Art, but we forget that its root is popular - popular culture.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

“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.”

— Jeffrey Deitch

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

— Jeffrey Deitch

“I was a fan of Andy's since I was a small kid. I recall seeing an ad of famous people on an airplane together. It was caricature drawing. There was Muhammad Ali, there was Miles Davis, and there was Andy Warhol. I had a fascination with him since I was little.”

— Jeffrey Deitch