Olivier Megaton Quotes

I have a company that does design and animation, so obviously graffiti is definitely an intricate part of what we admire and respect in the art world.

I love to paint and beautify the most unexpected of places - I've painted everything from doorways to trains but have always wanted to do something really huge and different.

People make art on the sides of buildings, and they'll make art on the sides of trains. They'll make art wherever they decide to make art. The technology that people are working with now will be replaced in 10 years, so that's not where your future is, if you're a musician.

There's never any graffiti in the hotel. Although in the Gents a couple of weeks ago I did see someone had drawn a lady's part. Quite detailed. The guy obviously had talent.

Is graffiti art or vandalism? That word has a lot of negative connotations and it alienates people, so no, I don't like to use the word 'art' at all.

I wanted to be a painter and an artist. And it's interesting that in some of my later musical works, I refer so often and associate myself with works of art.

As a street artist, I'm used to sharing my stuff with the public. It's a communal experience. I've learned not to be so precious, but rather to enjoy the process.

I don't have this obsessive need to do street art all the time because it's already opened doors for me.

After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture.

I started off as a graffiti artist in the South Bronx. My tag name was 'Loco' because I would go crazy and tag anywhere I wanted, in the weirdest places.

I love graffiti because it enables kids from every social extraction to do something that brings them closer to art, when they normally wouldn't be stimulated to be visually creative. Graffiti helps to develop an awareness of immediate expressive and uncontrolled freedom.

Painting is a nail to which I fasten my ideas.

I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.

The parts of graffiti I like are really antagonizing still - it's not something that a museum would really embrace.

The Internet doesn't always play a great role for art, especially art in the street, as people take what they see for the final image of it. But the most interesting thing about street art is to see it for real, to understand what it means and where it's displayed.

I wasn't trying to turn graffiti into an art form. I just wanted to learn about art. I wanted to learn this game.

I paint a bit myself. My house in Clerkenwell has a room that is done up like a big installation.

Oh, I paint all the time.

The art that I do is for the people. It is about engaging a new audience who wouldn't necessarily go to art galleries and museums and painting on the street is the best way to do that.

Spraypainting a shop shutter turns an ugly, boring thing into something interesting and colourful. I think you'd have to be a pretty negative person to find fault in it.

Street artists want to add something to the environment. They consider the audience, whereas graffiti writers don't care about anyone except themselves, they do it purely for the kick.

My work isn't overtly political, although it is sometimes painted in places where I don't have permission to paint, so that could be construed as a political statement.

When I got into graffiti, it was the most-exciting art form and it changed the course of my life.

In college, all my friends were graffiti writers, but I never wrote graffiti. I wanted to participate and do something cool on the street, so I'd make these portraits of people. I'd isolate them on a white wall, make a silkscreen of it, and do these portraits in bathrooms and all around. That's how I started the Polaroids.

Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it, and there's no admission fee.