David S. Rubin Quotes

“As a pluralist, I’m open to any genre or medium, but it does have to motivate me first.  My basic criteria for curating definitely apply in deciding what to review.  I ask four questions:  1) Is it visually engaging? 2) Does it have a fresh and unfamiliar edge? 3) Is there a fair degree of accessibility? 4) Is the work relevant to the time in which it was created?”

— David S. Rubin, Quoted in Ann Landi, “What Turns Critics On (and Off),” Vasari21, January 22, 2020

“In the eighties, we are again experiencing cultural restlessness, where amidst the screeching of the artists who express themselves with anger, can now be heard the softer pleas of those who turn inward, searching for the healing and nurturing alternatives to rage.”

— David S. Rubin, Catalog essay, Concerning the Spiritual: The Eighties, San Francisco Art Institute, July, 1985

“We are a culture that speaks to one another in signs and symbols—in visual codes that more often than not have multiple meanings. While not the only emblem available today from the vast image lexicon, the cross has proven to be among the most effective and expedient communications vehicles of our time, as it is minimal in form, substantive in content, historically grounded, and accessible to all.”

— David S. Rubin, “Primary Structures, Metaphors, and Emblems: Crosses in Contemporary Art,” Cruciformed: Images of the Cross since 1980, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, 1991

“Art serves many functions, but the most important function is to stir people and to get them to feel something and, if it does that, history has proven its great art!”

— David S. Rubin, NBC local news affiliate, Phoenix, Arizona, March 17, 1996; Remarks given in interview with NBC news affiliate following public protests of the exhibition “Old Glory: The American Flag in Contemporary Art.”

“In 1775, as the colonists battled for freedom against the British for the first time at Breed’s Hill and Bunker Hill near Boston, they hoisted a variety of flags of various designs and colors, none of which resembled the stars-and-stripes format adopted in 1777. Today, a parallel battle is taking place, as artists fight for a different kind of freedom—the right to free expression guaranteed by the First Amendment. Once again, a variety of flags of various designs and colors are being hoisted, but now they are thrust into the forefront of contemporary culture and, this time—with just cause—they exist as potent variations of the original.”

— David S. Rubin, “From U.S.A. to S.O.S.: Changing Perspectives on the American Flag,” Old Glory: The American Flag in Contemporary Art, Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, 1994

“As listeners and sometimes also as performers, contemporary artists continue to rely upon rock and roll music as a necessary stimulant for an expansive range of creative output that crosses the entire spectrum of expressions—from conceptual to impassioned, reality-based to fabricated, aesthetic to socially responsive. Collectively, these artists bring their unique contributions to fulfilling Danny and the Juniors’ musical prediction of 1959, that rock and roll is here to stay.”

— David S. Rubin, Catalog essay, It’s Only Rock and Roll: Rock and Roll Currents in Contemporary Art, Exhibition Management, Inc., 1995

“In a full turnabout from the elitist attitudes of the twentieth-century artists and critics who elevated the individual ego or championed the concept of ‘art for art’s sake,’ there is a growing populist tendency toward making art that is for everyone. Using psychedelic pictorial languages as seductive visual stimuli, these artists are merely conduits transmitting optically charged information, enticing viewers into sumptuous wonderlands for inquiry, speculation, and connectivity.”

— David S. Rubin, “Stimuli for a New Millennium,” Psychedelic:Optical and Visionary Art since the 1960s, San Antonio Museum of Art, 2010