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We live in a youth-obsessed, aesthetically obsessed culture. That is no more evident than in the film industry.

It is veneer, rouge, aestheticism, art museums, new theaters, etc. that make America impotent. The good things are football, kindness, and jazz bands.

Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fast-growing percentage of our students are no longer taught much about any works of American art, be they novels, paintings, symphonies or ballets.

I will never permit myself to give in to American taste and lower the standards of art.

American art, like America, must wait and live a while longer.

I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system.

If you get it out into the urban field it's going to be used or misused but it'll also probably provide a way of people acknowledging what the aesthetic is about because people have to confront it every day.

Great American art needs the idea of uninterrupted spaces, like a loft, which itself is something very American.

Exposure to the arts and culture is enormously valuable.

My photography is often a sociological look at American culture, and it's been very well published in the U.K.