Artistic Labeling Quotes

It's interesting that we assign the label 'political' to art that doesn't just fit a mould of status quo. Is 'Downton Abbey' not political? That's political! Every piece of art offers a perspective on the world. And what is politics if not a perspective on the world? 'Downton Abbey' is about class. It's also about race.

I don't think an artist should keep themselves categorized in a specific box.

I have a very difficult time describing my music. Because I run into people in the hardware store and they go, 'Oh, you're a musician. So what kind of music do you play?' And I go, 'Uh, I've been doin' this for many years - I don't know what to call it.'

I've been called everything. Gangsta rap. I've been called conscious rap. You know, everything. Whoever feels like calling it whatever they want to call it, that's on them.

I mean, there's plenty of artists who are making R&B music, but because of their ethnicity, it's considered something else.

I'm a film director. Gay is an adjective that I certainly am, but I don't know that it's my first one. I think if you're just a gay filmmaker, you get pigeonholed just like if you say I'm a black filmmaker, I'm a Spanish filmmaker, I'm a whatever.

I hate labels because it should be just music. I don't see anything wrong with disco. Call it anything. It's music.

Ironically, my tastes aren't that experimental, and I wouldn't describe my music on the surface as being overtly experimental, either.

There's nothing in Hollywood that's inherently detrimental to good art. I think that's a fallacy that we've created because we frame the work that way too overtly. 'This is Hollywood.' 'This isn't Hollywood.' It's like, 'No, this is actually all Hollywood.' People are just framing them differently.

I don't want to be considered 'the Latino rapper.'

Despite a large body of work in films, TV, theatre and concerts, I am viewed by many as a Jewish artist. I do not resent the label, except for the fact that I disapprove of labels in general.

Genre labels are useful only insofar as they help you find an audience.

I see no reason for calling my work poetry except that there is no other category in which to put it.

I don't label films or actors, and labelling means setting boundaries. Why do you want to do that to art?

I've always felt I had more in common with the modernist approach than with postmodernism, but I can see where the connection might arise - and to be honest, I'm no academic, so I tend to use these words, like in Alice In Wonderland, to mean what I want them to mean rather than what they actually do mean.

What I write could only be called poetry because there is no other category to put it.

A director is a director. We shouldn't categorize one into a this or that director.

Picasso never thought of himself as avant-garde. I just find it a bad way to think of yourself.

I wish my work would be recognized by a larger crowd of people as more art than be stuck with the cartoonist label for the rest of my life.

It can be a bit frustrating to always get the soft-rock stamp.

But sometimes that title 'jazz' can vex people who think they know exactly what jazz always is and will be.

I think that we'll see the concept of 'genre' continue to die a slow and painful death.

When you're from the East Coast or you're from the South, people expect you to sound a certain way. So if you don't sound that way, people won't label you as that type of artist. For me, I had a whole new lane to create for myself being from Pittsburgh and being a Midwest artist.

To call somebody a Jewish composer is obviously redundant.

I was not an Abstract Expressionist. Nor was I an Irascible.