Cornelia Parker Quotes

Political art expresses the cliches you agree with, unlike propaganda, which expresses the cliches you don't.

You make a movie, and if somebody reads something into it, then great, more power to him.

I try not to spend too much time interpreting my comics for people, because I try to put out there whatever I can, and people can draw whatever conclusions they want.

And I like to interpret music. So I think it's all interpretive.

I think writers like to see how people bring their words to life, and it's always surprising. Always, no matter what, whether it's good or bad, it's always surprising because a whole human being is coming to that piece of writing.

I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it's no longer his... I just see what people make of it.

I prefer to leave the paintings to speak for themselves.

It is difficult to make political art work.

There are websites of 'True Detective' artwork out there now, and it's beautiful. And I don't want to take that away from anybody. I know what it means to me. But I don't want to take away anyone's interpretation of the show.

Of course I'm schooled in the old school method: taking what I think the director wants, then reworking it through my own brain and heart.

Any form of art is political if you make it that way.

It's not my job to tell people what a work means.

What higher art does is to invite us in and allow us to make decisions.

I've never allowed my specific personal practice or belief to be overtly integrated to the music. Because that's crossing the line into, 'We want you to think this.' And that's not what we're about.

The music should speak for itself, and hopefully it will.

Art has nothing to do with clarity, does not dabble in the clear and does not make clear

People will say things after a screening that it affects them in a certain way, which is why I don't like to explain what certain things are about. I want them to have that. It limits people's ability to understand something if I say it's "about this." That's happened to us a bunch on this.

The worlds I paint leave a lot to engage the imagination by hinting at what lies beyond the four edges of the painting.

Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.

If I was an artist, and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.

Early in my career, a critic said that I needed to "explain" the irony in my work, suggesting that I needed to add text next to the images to help people understand what I was trying to say. At first I was dismayed that I wasn't making work with a clear enough message. That's when I realized that that was the exact opposite of what I wanted to do - that I wasn't responsible for a misinterpretation of my work, that there should be some ambiguity to it. They either got it, or they didn't.

I have intentions as a writer, but people - when they're listening to a track - will take from it what they interpret.

Do not copy nature too much. Art is an abstraction.

The poets are almost always wrong about the facts... That's because they are not really interested in facts: only in truth...

I don't want to tell what the songs are about for me, because then people can't decide for themselves, which is why I write; it's for you to find your own meaning in. For me it's my story, for someone else it's theirs; if I tell exactly what it means, then it's only my story.