I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.
Because of my job, I get a lot of opportunity to grab a few days here and there in many cool cities for press commitments, magazine shoots and premieres - Barcelona, Madrid, Rome, Paris, Stockholm, New York, Berlin. I always try to get to a gallery or museum if there's time.
I applied to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and didn't get in the first year, so I worked at Costa and the Dean Gallery Cafe then applied again and got in the next year when I was 18. I was so excited.
The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.
When I was eight or nine, I came to London for the day from Swindon and went to The National Gallery. I remember standing in Trafalgar Square with my best friend Tim, who was covered in pigeons because I put bird seed on his head.
If I had been in the gallery, I'd have gone home.
Well, I'd say that the beginning of this thing came through with Art of This Century, Peggy Guggenheim's, where she opened this gallery and began showing some things that caused a little talk, amongst a lot of other things.
I don't go digital. I was never good with technology. I didn't have a cellphone until I moved to New York. My gallery was like, 'What? How are we supposed to contact you?'
Mick has expressed an interest in coming to the gallery tonight because he's seen me behaving myself lately. He is being much more supportive, which is nice.
I never wanted to be someone who's asking someone to put my work in their gallery. I wanted to be asked.
The Spiral Gallery may happen, too. It is not dependent on government funding.
I enjoy doing my work, and I don't want to deal with the other things. When you enjoy doing your work so much, why deal with where to show, how to show, what to do? If the artist finds the right gallery which respects their work and gives them that freedom to do whatever they want to do, the artist can focus on his work.
When I go to an art gallery and stand in front of a painting, I don't want someone telling me what I should be seeing or thinking; I want to feel whatever I feel, see whatever I see, and figure out what I figure out.
I love the idea of bringing my work to the general public, not just people who go to gallery openings.
I've noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it's various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.
As humans we look at things and think about what we've looked at. We treasure it in a kind of private art gallery.
Urs Fischer specializes in making jaws drop. Cutting giant holes in gallery walls, digging a crater in Gavin Brown's gallery floor in 2007, creating amazing hyperrealist wallpaper for a group show at Tony Shafrazi: It all percolates with uncanny destructiveness, operatic uncontrollability, and barbaric sculptural power.
Works of art often last forever, or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves, especially gallery exhibitions, are like flowers; they bloom and then they die, then exist only as memories, or pressed in magazines and books.
I have a suspicion that a lot of artists are trying to get a laugh but, unlike stand-ups, they don't get an immediate response from their audience; a laugh is a rare thing in a gallery.
People go into a gallery, and they're afraid to express their opinions about art. No one's afraid to say, 'Keanu Reeves was bad in that movie.' We see so many films that we can tell who's faking it. But with art, we can't always tell.
I thought art was dead rabbits hanging by their feet on a wall. I went to Italy and saw all the religious paintings, and they didn't move me all that much. Then someone invited me to see this van Gogh exhibit at the Rosenberg Gallery in San Francisco.
My father was king of the guidebooks and our holidays were always planned, taking us from a great gallery to an ace cafe to a beautiful view. And as an actor, I loathe improvisation because there's no structure and no one knows what's going on.
I have friends in France who are artists. I go to gallery openings and things like that.
There is something uniquely depressing about the fact that the National Portrait Gallery's version of the Barack Obama 'Hope' poster previously belonged to a pair of lobbyists. Depressing because Mr. Obama's Washington was not supposed to be the lobbyists' Washington, the place we learned to despise during the last administration.
Growing up in the '70s and '80s when my dad had an art gallery, one of the things that frustrated me was the world seemed so tiny, and to appreciate contemporary art, you needed a history of art, a formal education. I was more interested in the people, and that's why I went into the movie business in the first place.
I didn't want to be an actress. I wasn't trying to be in film or an art gallery for me.
There is no reason why the Louvre should be your favourite gallery just because it has the grandest collections in France, any more than Kew should necessarily be a favourite garden because it has the largest assemblage of plants, or Tesco your chosen shop because it has the widest variety of canned beans.
In a way, my father was lucky. He had a hunch that his vision of the National Gallery would interest other collectors and persuade them to come in with him, and that hunch proved to be right.
The best place for puffin watching is Sumburgh Head, at the south end of the Shetland mainland. There used to be a lighthouse there, but it's now a visitor centre and gallery; they run a webcam, so you can check on the puffins in advance.
You know how you feel somebody looking at you, and you turn, and somebody actually is? It's the same at an art gallery. You're looking at one portrait, turn around, and there is a work of art directly behind you. Because it's all energy. Every single thing has energy.
I've become convinced that Los Angeles is going to become the next contemporary art capital - no other city has more contemporary gallery space than Los Angeles. We've come into our own, finally.
Sunday is the one day I keep reminding myself that I should lay around and take it easy, but because I am O.C.D. and an extreme multitasker, I find it hard to get lazy. I love Sundays for painting because it's quieter; the gallery is closed, and there are no interruptions.
Film is something that reaches so many people. How many people are going to go into a gallery? And understand what they're seeing? I think about the guy walking down the street, the guy who drove me here - this guy has the opportunity to go the cinema.
I'm noticing a new approach to art making in recent museum and gallery shows. It flickered into focus at the New Museum's 'Younger Than Jesus' last year and ran through the Whitney Biennial, and I'm seeing it blossom and bear fruit at 'Greater New York,' MoMA P.S. 1's twice-a-decade extravaganza of emerging local talent.
The Washingtonian said it shouldn't be built. The gallery's East Building is now considered a triumph, and members of the American Association of Architects have voted it one of the best buildings of all time.
My gallery represents a lot of figurative artists.
