Rei Kawakubo Quotes

I'm not that obsessed with making representations of ugliness. Everything I've seen is beautiful.

Beauty really has such a wide field of interpretation. I guess that's why it's forever fascinating.

To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed by the concept of 'art'. What one person considers to be 'art' is often not 'art' to another. 'Beautiful' and 'ugly' are old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows? Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may well be art. Only 'kitsch' is not art - we're all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is 'kitsch'? If only I knew!

I like to aestheticize every possible thing that can be aestheticized.

Only ugliness is obscene.

TV in all its ugliness can be a beautiful thing.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.

He was afflicted by the thought that where Beauty was, nothing ever ran quite straight, which no doubt, was why so many people looked on it as immoral.

The ugly can achieve an absoluteness beyond the reach of beauty.

For me, life offers so many complexly appealing moments that two beautiful objects may be equally beautiful for different reasons and at different times. How can one choose?

A beautiful dress can be as exciting as a poem.

What do I care if you are good? Be beautiful! and be sad!

The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful?

I didn't care about truth; I cared about beauty. It took me many years--it took the experience of lived time--to realize that they really are the same thing.

Fashion: a beautiful thing that becomes ugly. Art: an ugly thing that becomes beautiful.

I think making things beautiful is important. But often what's first considered ugly is beautiful, too.

Absolute and entire ugliness is rare.

Love and art do not embrace what is beautiful but what is made beautiful by this embrace.

Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.

Art is the most beautiful deception of all!

In architecture it isn't enough to just have the right building that works well. It can also be beautiful. It can also be different. It can create surprise. And surprise is the main thing in a work of art. [] I like and respect Brasí­lia very much. It is a simple city, a rational one. I always defend the urban design of Brasí­lia

The most beautiful faces have some ugly in them.

I like the ideology of there being no such thing as perfection. But I'm of the opinion that I have witnessed perfection at various times, especially in art.

Beauty is that little something that fills the whole world, and is contained neither in a single straight nose, a long eyelash, nor a blue mountain. Some see it in a leg of mutton, others in a compound fracture; and to expect others to accept one's own definition of it is as absurd as to expect all humanity to use the same toilet-brush.