Artistic Conformity Quotes

When I was in school, they say everybody can do art. And I was, like, a little bit obstinate - not an anarchist, but I was always asking questions. I said, 'Isn't art supposed to be difficult?' If we can all do art, then it's not really art. It's supposed to be difficult.

From being at art college, I've always hated people that have the gall to think that they're being incredibly different when they're doing something in a very acceptable way, something safe that they've seen someone else doing.

The way in which modern German poetry follows theories reminds me of pupils who, scolded by their teacher for their insubordination, justify themselves by saying that they invented new rules of propriety according to which they are quite well- behaved.

The most effective way of destroying art is the canonization of one given form. And one philosophy.

I don't want to be in an art bubble.

A lot of artists go in the studio and say, 'OK, whaddaya want me to do? Is it gonna be a hit? I'll do it. Is it gonna get played on the radio? I'll do it.' So they start makin' these songs, and they fall in the same tempo, same category, same this, same that, and it'll just all sound the same.

Sculptors are obliged to follow the manners of the painters, and to make many ample folds, which are unsufferable hardness, and more like a rock than a natural garment.

I also take pleasure in the so-called negative power in Grotjahn's work. That is, I love his paintings for what they are not. Unlike much art of the past decade, Grotjahn isn't simply working from a prescribed checklist of academically acceptable, curator-approved 'isms' and twists.

Once avant-garde artists receive official recognition, they start a double life. In one, they inspire younger artists to do more. In the other, they inspire a mass of imitators who make the work respectable and exclusionary. The artists and their art become intellectual brand names.

When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost.

I shall never forget what I saw at the Museum of Modern Art: in a spotless schoolroom, fifty little girls painting away at tables covered with brushes, pots, tubes, bowls, staring into space and sticking out their tongues like the clever animals that ring a bell, tongues lolling and eyes vague. Teachers supervise these young creators of abstract art and slap their wrists if what they paint represents something and dangerously inclines toward realism. The mothers - still at the Picasso stage - are not admitted.

The Academies of Art are nothing but great painting factories - those with talent are fed in at one end, and they come out as mechanical painting machines.

When fashion sweeps in, artists follow suit. I think this is the malady of contemporary art.

There's a broad range of male rappers, so if they're going out on a limb and they sound different, it's okay, because we have 20 other rappers doing what the radio wants... as far as females, there aren't as many, so if you want to compete, you have to sound just like this, because that's the only thing hot right now.

Nothing is more subtly destructive than a closed circle of artists feeding on one another. Envy grows from insignificant differences between people, not from overwhelming inequalities... it was envy that forced them to emulate each other, not esteem.

It was easy to leave the art world after I found out that it was just another corporation. When they told me I had to create the same thing, I rebelled.

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

A lot of artists who have a certain style are expected to more or less keep doing their style. It's so easy to get into that rut of production.

Youth must go ahead and prosper. These young painters are all very talented people, but they all paint frescoes.

Obviously, the Sixties was a time when everyone wanted to experiment, and then everything became very formulated and corporate, so artists tended to get pushed into a kind of pattern. Now, I think that has continued with the emergence of televised talent shows like 'X Factor.'

With homogenized culture, even if you feel frustrated, you'd have to write a Taylor Swift song to get heard.

In art, there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists. And in the end, doesn't the revolutionary's work become official, once the State takes it over?

We now have cultural machines so powerful that one singer can reach everybody in the world, and make all the other singers feel inferior because they're not like him. Once that gets started, he gets backed by so much cash and so much power that he becomes a monstrous invader from outer space, crushing the life out of all the other human possibilities. My life has been devoted to opposing that tendency.