Eugene Ionesco Quotes

Art is art. Politics is politics. It's very hard to get them together.

I have a feeling that art is something you do for yourself, and that any time you turn your decisions over to someone else you're postponing at best, your own development. The atmosphere of the workshop should be that of trying out one's own work and accepting the signals from others but not accepting the dictation of others because that is a violation of the spirit of art. Art can't be done by somebody else, it has got to be done by the artist.

I have the loftiest idea, and the most passionate one, of art. Much too lofty to agree to subject it to anything. Much too passionate to want to divorce it from anything.

Art is a severe business; most serious when employed in grand and sacred objects. The artist stands higher than art, higher than the object. He uses art for his purposes, and deals with the object after his own fashion.

Art isn't and shouldn't be responsible. If it is, it isn't functioning as art.

There is only one Art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. ... Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all.

To be sure, a good work of art can and will have moral consequences, but to demand of the artists moral intentions, means ruiningtheir craft.

What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.

I do not want my new works to be generated in a market or audience of any kind.

I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me.

I never do anything to strictly satisfy a fickle, ever-changing commercial world. I do the music I like to play. It's the only way I feel comfortable existing in the industry.

I am proud being an artist who takes risks, who would walk off a cliff artistically. I won't settle for commercial reasons.

I think there is a debate in the arts about, you know, whether we must strive for art for art's sake, and you know, kind of try to keep political debate out of our work. And to that I say, I'd like you to show me an example of, you know, this so-called apolitical art. I don't think there's any such thing.

Painting is a faith, and it imposes the duty to disregard public opinion.

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.

I grew up at the time of Social Realism in Poland, when everyone was supposed to be 'writing for the workers.' But I soon became allergic to this. I have never written for audiences. I like it if they appreciate my music. But I would never change my style for them.

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing - this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

Art can be engaged in the world without being specifically politically engaged.

It took me a long time to get to a position where I can feel that, with my art, I'm capable of saying what I need to say, and once I finish it, I can sit back and say, "It's done, and I'm okay with that. People can judge it good or bad, and it doesn't matter. I'm okay with it because I said something I needed to say." That's a really hard place to get, as an artist.

You make decisions, and that's what separates art from some other pop music. It doesn't mean that you can't make an embarrassing amount of money, for a borderline Marxist, doing something that you love, but it does mean that this huge pool of money that was out there when I started making records in the '80s is gone.

The world is a king, and like a king, desires flattery in return for favor; but true art is selfish and perverse — it will not submit to the mold of flattery.

The method of producing comics in Japan is very hectic, but it's also rewarding because it's possible to do both the story and art all by yourself. In this way, it's possibly to bring out one's individuality. If this idea appeals to you, I call on you to try drawing your own manga.

The work of art may have a moral effect, but to demand moral purpose from the artist is to make him ruin his work.

Robert Gober, for example. He doesn't seem like somebody who is just going to show in a gallery that asks him to show. He's just making his work, and when he's ready, he's going to show it.