Jonas Akerlund Quotes

I think it's part of the responsibility of an artist to shock, to upset, to make people think differently, and to surprise people. And that's where the good humor is, if there's a surprise and there's something unexpected. Something that's not normal, not in the realm of general living expectations.

I think artists can influence only through making music that challenges people, excites them and flips them out. Music that repeats what you know in ever-decreasing derivation, that's unchallenging and unstimulating, deadens our minds, our imagination and our ability to see beyond the hell we find ourselves in.

I want to put concepts in front of people that make them laugh or smile or even hate what I do. I'm not interested in just putting clothes in stores.

I want to provoke people with thoughts, not by taking my clothes off. It's time to move on from Stripperville.

There's a famous artist, Ron English, in New York, that just, or Andy Warhol for that matter, that did pop art that terrorized society. And that's, for the last like 10, 15 years, that's all I wanted to do, is terrorize society and make them look into a mirror and see what the hell we have wrought.

Art should walk a tightrope. That's what art should be. Art should be dangerous. You can't be scared to say something with it. People love to talk about how comics are real art and real literature, so why not use these characters to talk about real things, even if it is dangerous?

Just finding ways to be not provocative for provocative's sake, but to show an idea that hasn't been shown before, I mean that's interesting to me.

Art has the power to influence and to make you react to something that you normally wouldn't concern, worry, or even think about or wouldn't want to talk about.

That's the real power of art, I think. Not to chide but to provoke challenge. Otherwise why bother?

I think as much as possible, an artist, if he has any kind of social or political concern, has to…expose as much as possible what he sees so that some people think about things that they don’t normally think about… [Art] should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.

When you're young, with less on the line, it's easier to be audacious, to experiment. So I introduced the concerns of my generation - politics, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll, etc. - to the comics page, which for many years caused a rolling furor.

I think that to explore the uncomfortable and the politically incorrect is the job of the artist.

I feel that as artists - whatever your medium is - I feel that we're watching what goes on around us and we take what we don't see, or we don't hear, or we don't feel and we do something that speaks of it; more about it, for it, or against it - whatever our perspective is - that's what our job is.

And as a writer, one of the things that I've always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that's what we're supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

Original thought, original artistic expression is by its very nature questioning, irreverent, iconoclastic.

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

I still have to say that I did 'Dirty Pretty Things' 11 years ago. That was a very sudden shift in my life and my relationship to my work, and it didn't feel it was impossible to make a film like that.

What is art? Art talks about life; it's subversive.

I never deliberately set out to shock, but when people don't walk out of my plays I think there is something wrong.

My challenge as a satirical artist is how to present ideas to people to enable them to question and reexamine their beliefs. My hope is, that my work provokes people to look at things in a new way.

The culture is just so coarse that you have to take it to that level and people will be like, 'Whoa!' And then you can make people think about stuff. It's kind of like shock therapy.

I think good books have to make a few people angry.

Not just art for art's sake, but I want to have films out there that will provoke authentic, holistic conversations about the human condition. And not provide the easy answers, but put it out there.

I think the job of artists is to stir things up.

It's a great place to be as an artist: if you confuse your label, you're doing your job.