King Princess Quotes

Art is not something to decorate a wall. Art is a political weapon.

I think at some point there may be artists who will get fed up, and they deliberately want to use their art as a means to rock the waves a little bit. And instead of doing the status quo, they'll deliberately go out to really make a change. I think Kendrick Lamar is an example of that.

I don't believe that there is a separation between art and political consciousness.

There was a belief after World War I that painting could be an act of civil revolt. I want this exhibition, 'New Museum,' to be an act of civil disobedience. It's not so much about the New Museum on the Bowery, but the idea of challenging museums as projections of cultural authority. It's painting as insurgency.

When the world becomes a massive mess with nobody at the helm, it's time for artists to make their mark.

I'd love to break America, like all artists do. It's a lot of work but, you know, it's got to be done!

In the seventies, a group of American artists seized the means not of production but of reproduction. They tore apart visual culture at a time of no money, no market, and no one paying attention except other artists. Vietnam and Watergate had happened; everything in America was being questioned.

Political art - not always a contradiction in terms - can destroy institutions, or eat away at them.

I think that there are artists of different genres whose calling is to use their art to hope to affect and better the human condition - whether it's System of a Down, or Rage Against the Machine, or Public Enemy, or the Clash, Bruce Springsteen, or Pete Seeger. It's a group that I'm proud to be counted among.

Art is activism.

Bohemia isn't somewhere an artist runs to escape society. It's a place where like-minded artists gather to plot the downfall of dogma and ignorance.

I consider myself an 'actorvist.' When I say that, what I mean is that I use my art to inform my activism and to be my activism sometimes, but I also use my activism in my art.

An avant-garde man is like an enemy inside a city he is bent on destroying, against which he rebels; for like any system of government, an established form of expression is also a form of oppression. The avant-garde man is the opponent of an existing system.

Use your art to fight.

Art is a weapon in the struggle of ideas, the class struggle.

What does one prefer? An art that struggles to change the social contract, but fails? Or one that seeks to please and amuse, and succeeds?

I feel like art has been at the center of change since the beginning of time.

I actually believe that this Trump phenomenon, which has affected many of us, is going to accelerate the use of art for philanthropy, because people are realizing that art is a vehicle for showing opposition - just look at the signs in the women's marches.

Singers like Beyonce and Kendrick Lamar are very conscious of what's going on around them, and they're waking up lot of young people with that knowledge. They bring their enlightenment to the world; the world that is buying their records.

I want to have a movement with my music.

Poetry can change the world, just like any art can change the world, by changing consciousness. Of course this was the great slogan of the nineteen sixites hippies’ revolution—enlarge the area of consciousness, which quite often was done by psychedelic means.

I think art is a very important weapon to achieve human freedom

The artist in our time has two chief responsibilities: (1) art; and (2) sedition.

Art and activism can be symbiotic. They don't have to be, of course; they can also be contradictory.

With my music, I create change...I am using my music as a weapon.