I believe that an art exhibition can be engaging, fun and deeply intellectually satisfying and serious. These are not contradictory concepts in art.
After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture.
Art dealing is when you're doing it as a business.
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.
Part of my agenda has been to support art that engages life with people.
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.
We use the term pop in the art world, as in Pop Art, but we forget that its root is popular - popular culture.
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 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.
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.
What I hope is I'll eventually be seen as an actual individual, not as some abstraction - an art dealer running a museum.
Art, film, fashion, music are all going on and interacting simultaneously. And L.A. is very receptive to that fusion.
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.
From 1940 to the present, the art world and particularly Los Angeles, has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.
Andy Warhol defined Pop Art.
There is a constant ebb and flow in art historical reputations. The reputation of even the greatest figures like Picasso are in flux.
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.
