Madonna Ciccone Quotes

I want art to make me think. In order to do that, it may piss me off, or make me uncomfortable. That promotes awareness and change, or at least some discussion.

Art has the power to influence and to make you react to something that you normally wouldn't concern, worry, or even think about or wouldn't want to talk about.

Art is supposed to spark conversation and make people think.

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

In any society, the artist has a responsibility. His effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of non-conformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is important.

I don't think it's an artist's responsibility to be political all the time. I think your first responsibility as an artist is to make music that people will listen to and enjoy. However, I think that when you are able to say something that is moving and put it in a great song, then that is even better.

The only thing I consider before signing a project is that my fans should like it. I understand my responsibility towards my fans.

Often, entertainment goes deeper, in terms of ideas, than the newspapers.

When Lady Gaga wears a meat dress, it's meant to be controversial, but then it turns into money, and it's all fine.

At this point, in 2008, if you put out a book, a movie, or write a verse, paint a painting, it should have some sort of social value.

The artists always reflect the times, so there's a lot to think about, a lot of unknowns, a lot of things that are describable. This is the closest I've seen to the kind of ambience that made the '60s happen. It's not about the artist having a responsibility to do anything. They have to be artists and express themselves and everything will work out fine.

We, as pop stars, are people not androids. We’ve got views. I’ve got opinions and I don’t see why I shouldn’t use a bit of my art to put them over. I think music is one of the most powerful media forces in the world today.

Art has always been this--pure interrogation, rhetorical question less the rhetoric--whatever else it may have been obliged by social reality to appear.

If you look at the lives of artists, sitting in nature, painting, having the freedom. I think it's over. I think we're living in such a difficult moment of human development. Artists have more responsibility than ever before.

My drawings and paintings were done as an act of protest; I was trying by means of my work to convince the world that it is ugly, sick and hypocritical.

I think it’s a responsibility for any artist to protect freedom of expression and to use any way to extend this power.

All great art ... creates in the beholder not self-satisfacti on but wonder and awe. Its great liberation is to lift us out of ourselves.

As an artist, even if you are putting out something really dark and disturbing, that's good because it's opening a discussion. Always in the back of my mind is this thought that the world has to be a better place with you in it.

Art does not exist only to entertain, but also to challenge one to think, to provoke, even to disturb, in a constant search for truth.

It's the duty of art to ask questions, not to provide answers. And if you want a clearer answer, I'll have to pass.

Sometimes art is just about getting a reaction, that's really the end-all be-all.

Every artist, as child of his age, is impelled to express the spirit of his age.

I consider chess an art, and accept all those responsibilities which art places upon its devotees.

The writer's only responsibility is to his art.

Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself.