David Hockney Quotes

The more far-out artists, the better.

I know that whatever I put out, whether people think it's pop or noise or whatever, it's always going to be some kind of a freak or mutation. It's not going to be anything pure that a lot of people will relate to. And that's fine.

'Hedwig' was pretty much all the things I wanted to do that other people said I probably shouldn't do: drag, punk rock, stand-up comedy... You know, combine them all in a thing that's supremely uncommercial from the objective point of view.

It does not matter how badly you paint so long as you don't paint badly like other people.

I've realised that if I aim for a successful record, I probably won't have any success. But if I keep making weird things, then hopefully the audiences will come to us.

I wanted to make my sophomore film as different as possible. I didn't want to be pigeonholed. I didn't want to be identifiable.

Punk was such an exciting time because there were no rules. You could go and knock on Sun Ra's door - and he was in the phonebook, under Ra!

In the contemporary world, artists are almost entirely self-referential.

Why not do something strange and different for once? Artists can do whatever they want!

All art is based on non-conformity.

The most wonderful time to be in the art world was in the sixties, because it wasn't a business - there was no business of doing art.

I think the avant-garde often hides itself in the highly incomprehensible because they are frustrated that the real world is so boring.

I want to be an artist you cannot categorize at all. You can't put a box around me. You can't put anything around me.

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done.

The art world was not initially really accepting my kind of work. I was ahead of my time.

People must insist on the right to say no, to be alone, to stand out from the herd. Creative artists can say all this in their own way and in their own field, by hard, rigorous work.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Being an artist is in part an act of rupture.

Picasso's always been such a huge influence that I thought when I started the cartoon paintings that I was getting away from Picasso, and even my cartoons of Picasso were done almost to rid myself of his influence.

I don't know if I would qualify as mainstream. I think I have managed to function pretty successfully on the fringes of the music world and have been able to play exactly what I have wanted the way I have wanted.

There are no categories in contemporary art. There are no rules. Artists are given the freedom to make and create whatever they please and call it whatever they please. I identify with that system, or lack of system, much more than I do the landscape of contemporary publishing.

Most artists like to think of themselves as rugged individualists, as independent characters.

You know the question: 'How do you get to Carnegie Hall?' Answer: 'Practise?' Well, in my case, I got there by not practising. I didn't finish my music degree. And when I got into the pop world, I decided not to conform because I figured that the point of being an artist was that you shouldn't be like anyone else.

What I'm doing is art - it's low-brow art but there's a magic in that.

I found out that total creativity involves a certain intellectual rebellion - not to become a criminal, but somehow. to be totally creating, you have to do things that are a little bit forbidden. You have to feel free, and we know freedom is a hard thing to get.