John Waters Quotes

When it comes to art and science, people don't like a lot of either. Instead of being open to it, they're closed off about it.

Street art, of course, is political, because it's illegal, so the very act of doing it is an act of defiance.

While it may be a really trying, weird time for the art world, I see good work all the time. If you just go around to that many galleries, and if you stay open, you're going to see work with enough energy and surprise. I don't think I've ever gone to the galleries without coming home thinking, Gee, I now know something I didn't know this morning.

This man, who for twenty-five years has been reading and writing about art, and in all that time has never understood anything about art, has for twenty-five years been hashing over other people's ideas about realism, naturalism and all that nonsense; for twenty-five years he has been reading and writing about what intelligent people already know and about what stupid people don't want to know--which means that for twenty-five years he's been taking nothing and making nothing out of it. And with it all, what conceit! What pretension!

I think we are all of us a pretty milky lot, without tea-table convictions and our radicalism that keeps so consistently within the bounds of decorum . . . .I'd like to annihilate these stupid colleges of ours . . . instillers of stodginess.

Contemporary art hates you.

I think that rebellions arise out of anger, and they're very short-lived.

Modern pictures are, no doubt, delightful to look at. At least, some of them are. But they are quite impossible to live with; they are too clever, too assertive, too intellectual. Their meaning is too obvious, and their method too clearly defined. One

I think comedy is an angry art form; it's an outsider art form.

Do you—do you think I want to—do you think I give a—I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU HAVE TO SAY!" Harry roared. "You will," said Dumbledore sadly. "Because you are not nearly as mad at me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it.

I was on television a couple of years ago and the reporter asked me, "How does it feel being on mainstream media? It's not often poets get on mainstream media." I said, "Well I think you're the dominant media, the dominant culture, but you're not the mainstream media. The mainstream media is still the high culture of intellectuals: writers, readers, editors, librarians, professors, artists, art critics, poets, novelists, and people who think. They are the mainstream culture, even though you may be the dominant culture."

I think when something becomes a comfortable genre, it's against what street art stood for in the beginning - breaking out of genres and taking art out of galleries. Now street art is in the gallery, and it's all made up into a nice, packaged concept.

Two of my favorite artists are Josh Smith and Joe Bradley. But I argued against them for years, until I grew to love them and felt stupid for my immediate reaction towards their work. Now, I wouldn't be happier than to simply be their friend and to talk to them about what got them making art that was years ahead of my understanding. I never went to school for art or was told what to like or when. So every day is a learning process, like most of life.

I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.

I think musicals are a lowbrow, populist art form. And I don't mean lowbrow in a condescending way at all - they are designed to create delight, wonder, joy, surprise. And what becomes really interesting is when innovative or challenging or smart people take it and use the easy runway that the form allows to take people to another planet, or another place. Or subvert it in some way.

The fact that the work is affirmed by the Museum of Contemporary Art I think sends continued signals that this is worth paying attention to, looking at, and understanding.

I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art.

I would love to collect art at some point, but I think the whole rap/art world thing is getting kind of corny.

I'm Sirantha Jax, and I have had enough.

When you come up in the art world, whatevers in the air, the issues of the moment, end up becoming part of the working method or modus operandi of how you think about doing a painting. And I came up at a time when-actually painting was dead when I came up. Sculpture sort of ruled.

A good work can be communicated across languages ... [provided one does not] fall into the trap of narrow-minded nationalistic or chauvinistic thinking.

I tend to keep my mind open to the different forms of art out there and I am always willing to try new stuff.

Kicking a police car? Really?' Caleb shrugged. 'Car offended me. It was sitting right where I wanted to stand. What would you do?

Everyone has that moment where they just rebel.

Negroes - Sweet and docile, Meek, humble, and kind: Beware the day - They change their mind.