Corey Stoll Quotes

Art and propaganda have this much connection, that if a propaganda makes art impossible, it is clearly damned.

Real art has been... what's the word? Kidnapped? No, that's not it. But, OK, kidnapped by business.

there is no politically neutral art.

What I'm very upset about is the attempt to dictate to museums what they show, and the statements made by politicians in Washington that have curtailed the freedom of the National Endowment for the Arts. The attention to those issues is deflected by the spin of my supposedly having trivialized the Holocaust.

Art must not serve might.

Art has nothing to do with politics. It is the freest thing in the world.

When people start yammering about artistic responsibility, artists become wary. The subtext of such talk is that the arts need to be regulated, which is to say censored.

Performers have the right to say what they want to, and anyone paying money has the right to accept or reject the art and entertainment that's available.

Imagine if someone like John Lennon or Bob Marley, Sid Vicious, Picasso, whomever, were doing their work, and some corporation, some CEO, some branding entity was saying to you, 'Well, you can do that, but you've got to remove this aspect of your work.' There would no longer be that purity anymore.

There was an exhibition in Munich in 1937, 'Degenerate Art,' which included work by Klee, Kandinsky, Beckmann and many others. The work was called 'sick' and put in the trash heap. The sentiments expressed toward contemporary art by Jesse Helms, Pat Robertson and Mayor Giuliani recall the language used by the Nazis.

I find pop art really offensive because it's taking a piece of popular culture and putting it somewhere where people can't see it.

I just get the feeling that if Jesse Helms was in charge of art in America, you'd go into a museum and see nothing but prints of dogs playing cards.

Art is art. Politics is politics. It's very hard to get them together.

The second you feel a political imperative, it destroys your art.

Music is an artform, and I always though art was beyond censorship. I thought this was a common view. Apparently, I was wrong.

Art penetrates, no matter how many bans you put out.

Art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of power which holds it hostage.

If you come across an American artist right now who has no political opinions or is afraid of talking politics, be very concerned.

I don't think the government should touch art. Governments are risk averse. They encourage risk-averse personalities to be artists.

Everything about art has become problematic; its inner life, its relation to society, even its right to exist.

The conflict between art and politics... cannot and must not be solved.

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.

Art is about freedom of expression, and should not be molded to fit any propaganda or lofty ideal.

I think being an activist and an artist is an interesting contradiction, because so often they are at odds with one another. When you write as an artist you have to clean the palate of your own politics in creating characters and activism is kind of the exact opposite.

It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.