Munira Mirza Quotes

One often forgets that even if art is a very successful field in contemporary culture, there are still a lot of people alienated by it. Even if people don't fully understand where my work is coming from, at least there's somebody who looks kind of sane standing in front of you and politely engaging with you. People react.

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.

Traditionally, art has been for the select few. We have been brainwashed to believe that Michelangelo had to pat you on the head at birth.

Children's finger-painting came under the arts, but movies didn't.

Art cannot be looked at as an elite, sacred event anymore. It has to be embraced as an accessible, popular form, which is what I believe theater is at its roots.

One challenge to the arts in America is the need to make the arts, especially the classic masterpieces, accessible and relevant to today's audience.

The value of kitsch exists in its novelty and in its connotations to more legitimate counterparts.

I like the elitism of the art world. I think art for the people is a terrible idea.

Norman Rockwell - even though we think of him as a great American artist, in a lot of museums he has not garnered that kind of attention. And it's this kind of accessibility that we're trying to bring - not looking down on any art.

When you're a little kid, you just like music that makes you happy and is fun. As you get older, you reach college or your 20s and you decide that music should be challenging and all art should be smart. So you start to think it makes you like high art more to put down things you consider low art. I don't even think things are low art.

The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.

I get the feeling that people from outside the world of contemporary art see it as deserving of mockery, in an emperor's-new-clothes sort of way. I think that's not right and that it's just because they don't understand the discourse.

It is not hard to understand modern art. If it hangs on a wall it's a painting, and if you can walk around it it's a sculpture.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the public's relationship to art has been weakened by a profound institutional reluctance to address the question of what art is for. This is a question that has, quite unfairly, come to feel impatient, illegitimate, and a little impudent.

I think Hollywood acts like followers of culture and is constantly seeking to follow trends.

I think all children love art, but not all get the opportunity to do it.

If we investigate the vague feelings of the average man towards the arts, we find that he is timid and that he has developed a humble belief that art is something which has been invented centuries ago in countries like Greece or Italy and that all we can do about it is study it carefully and apply it.

I'm into looking at things from the other point of view. And if you look at who votes in the Oscars, mostly older Jewish guys, they're going to vote for stuff they relate to. Do they relate to NWA? I doubt it.

I think art was the one thing my high school didn't give. And I think that was probably one reason why I was interested in it.

I don't worry about whether anyone knows anything about art.

Contemporary art will never achieve the audience of football, pop music, or television, so I think we should stop comparing its possible area of influence to that of big mass-media events.

I have a fondness for making paintings that go beyond just having a conversation about art for art's sake or having a conversation about art history. I actually really enjoy looking at broader popular culture.

I think comedy is incredibly discriminated against. It is one of the most enjoyed yet most condescended art forms in the world. It's the same thing with hip-hop.

When classical singers or dancers look at cinema with derision, I have half a heart to tell them that they're wrong. They're losing a platform.

I feel like we have to fight for art.