Svetlana Alexievich Quotes

As a general truth, it is safe to say that any picture that produces a moral impression is a bad picture.

Art is not boosterism, it's not propaganda, and it's not spin, but that's not something that art does, and nor has it historically ever done it.

I personally don't distinguish between artistic and commercial films.

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

The morality of art is in its very beauty.

No erotic work of art is filth if it is artistically significant; it is only turned into filth through the beholder if he is filthy.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.

If art is singular expression, then by nature, the best art is controversial. But when art stirs debate for reasons besides its artistic integrity, that's when things get bent.

I believe in broken, fractured, complicated narratives, but I believe in narratives as a vehicle for truth, not simply as a form of entertainment, though I love entertainment, but also a way of conveying what needs to be conveyed about the works that I care about.

I believe that true art is universal in its appeal.

There's always been an ongoing struggle between commerce and art.

We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.

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.

People understand what art is supposed to look like, and so it's easy to make something that looks like art but isn't - especially in an abstract form.

Any work of art that can be understood is the product of journalism.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.

A proof of really great art is that it is generally true - it seldom falls into the misapprehensions to which minor art is liable.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

Art is not a form of propaganda; it is a form of truth.

Painting was a problem - you produce a thing, and then you sell it and get money, and that was quickly considered totally uncool.

I used to always say - and I think a lot of artists think of it this way - that when you see a black figure, the way the critical establishment operated, you can only imagine that figure having a sociological value. They never say the ways in which their aesthetics were equally worthy of consideration.

Once people write criticism about something - and even in 1967 I was far from alone - they're assuming it's art, and art is supposed to last.

It should be quite clear that it is possible for unpleasant people who are small in various ways other than in their artistic genius to produce great art. Art and morality have no necessary connection.

Art should never try to be popular.