Takashi Murakami Quotes

I've painted, but I've also done graphics since as long as I can remember. So even people with little to spend could afford it. But even the graphic works are only bought by those who buy the big, expensive paintings. I think that's troublesome.

With live-action I think we'd have lost the universal appeal of the Persepolis story. With live-action, it would have turned into a story of 'the Other' - people living in a distant land who don't look like us. It might have been exotic, but also a "Third-World" story.

People think that because I write about India I must be trying to portray India in a way.

People ask about art and commercialism. I think that if someone tries to sell their work at a high price, that is the wrong way of doing it.

A primitive artist is an amateur whose work sells.

Selling art is a lot different than making it.

For so long, Arab culture has been misconceived by the western mindset as exotic, or more recently, as dangerous, so spaces like Mathaf are vital for asserting a sense of connectedness.

I think when people think of music from coming from Oklahoma, they think of Toby Keith or even Garth Brooks or even Woody Guthrie. People think, "Why do we have to just be about the Bible and about football? Why can't we be about something like the Flaming Lips?" And I salute them! I say, "Well, that's great if you want that."

I think the collectors have made an enormous contribution, not only to the market but to painters themselves... These people that buy, that set standards, make everyone else itch to emulate.

I am pleased with the exhibition... everything on display was sold for a good price to decent people. It has been a long time since I believed that you could educate public taste.

People think the blues is sad. They hear people moaning and such. That's not the blues. That's just somebody singing slow...The blues is about truth-telling.

I do think they [French] view my writing itself as exotic - though that's probably not the best term for it - to a small extent, mainly because I say things that most French writers would probably hesitate to say for fear of offending someone or upsetting public sensibilities. I don't think that answers the question, but I'm not much good at figuring readers out or I would probably be writing bestsellers.

I think the music reflects the state that the society is in. It doesn't suggest the state. I think the poets and musicians and artists are of the age - not only do they lead the age on, but they also reflect that age. [...] Like The Beatles. We came out of Liverpool and we reflected our background and we reflected our thoughts in what we sang, and that's all people are doing.

I don't care how they think of it. Some of these people are acquiring some very good pictures by a lot of different photographers.

I think that what people abroad want from French film, inside French film becomes our worst fear, "Oh, another film about love!"

People always think the bread of another country is better than their own.

There's a market for art, and things are indeed going swimmingly, especially for German artists. But everything takes place in America and in London, where there are quite a few wealthy, engaged people. What motivates them to buy art is a different question, but they do.

If Hollywood and Bollywood were how we all lived our lives, that would surprise me. And yet it's often the way our cultures are conveyed, isn't it?

Do people think Swedes are cool? I think they think you're cool in spite of you being Swedish. But the good thing with being Swedish is that we're melancholic.

I think my work is very American because I'm American. But I found that Europeans like uncertainty and doubt.

I used to get upset with the word Bollywood, and what it means in the West. The stereotype of us being dancing, singing, puppet showgirls. Indians are nearly one fifth of the world's population; we have one of the most prolific film industries in the world. When people used to ask me about it, or replicate what they think is Bollywood dancing, thinking that they're being funny, I used to get offended. But now I show them the stuff we do.

Some of the wealthy collectors have paid lots of money for artwork that I already did, but I didn't do it with the intention of catering to them. I think part of the reason my work is attractive to people like that is because it doesn't cater to them.

What we're doing now, is to try to eradicate the limited notion of how people are interacting with each other through hyper-racialized ideas. A lot of it deal with, as an example, genre. If I ask you to visualize a trap musician or a hip-hop musician, you'll see one thing. If I say visualize a western classical musician, you'll see a very different thing. A lot of how music is disseminated to us is hyper-racialized. It's not something that we think about all the time, but if you take a minute to look back, it's why you get this argument when there's a white rapper.

I do think there is a segment of people in Oklahoma that really do love the Flaming Lips and love this other idea of what someone from Oklahoma could be like. I've sort of become the spokesperson for this "other person" who could come from Oklahoma.

I tend not to think that anything I happen to be reporting on in my films is special. Meaning that people are always saying to me, 'you must love New York, you have it in all your films.' But mostly it's because I know New York, and I know Brooklyn at this time. I know the lives there, because I have lived in them.