Betty Parsons Quotes

Every time I make a picture the critics' estimate of American public taste goes down ten percent.

[I am not for] spending the public money in the encouragement of the Fine Arts. Whether it is to be painting or sculpture, or both; if painting, what sort of painting, what are to be the subjects chosen, and who are to be the artists employed? All these questions furnish ample food for discussion, difference, and dispute.

I think at some point there may be artists who will get fed up, and they deliberately want to use their art as a means to rock the waves a little bit. And instead of doing the status quo, they'll deliberately go out to really make a change. I think Kendrick Lamar is an example of that.

An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication.

I always said God was against art and I still believe it.

I think TV is all about not turning off the public, it's about not being too sexy, not being too much of anything really.

I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes on around you.

The contemporary thing in art and literature is the thing which doesn't make enough difference to the people of that generation so that they can accept it or reject it.

I don't care if people think I am an overactor, as long as they enjoy what I do. People who think that would call Van Gogh an overpainter.

I don't want to paint rainbows: I want to make art that disturbs identity and challenges authority.

The Public - a thing I cannot help looking upon as an enemy, and which I cannot address without feelings of hostility.

The 1960s was a heroic age in the history of the art of communication - the audacious movers and shakers of those times bear no resemblance to the cast of characters in 'Mad Men.'

The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.

The one thing I'm proud of as a filmmaker is that people are entitled not to like my films - that's the privilege of the public - but I think I have my own imprint.

The police feel that most of the public are against them and that there is a lot of bad feeling.

Write verse, not poetry. The public wants verse. If you have a talent for poetry, then don't by any means mother it, but try your hand at verse.

Most people respond to my paintings quite generously, but there have been cases where I think people - a few critics in particular - were actually moved by the work but were disturbed by the feelings it evoked, so they attacked it. Some people find the realm of my work quite uncomfortable.

People always say that my work is sensational or shocking but there are truly shocking things you could do, and my sculptures don't go anywhere near that.

Art is always criticized and always an outsider gets the blame.

You've got to change with the public's taste.

Give the public what it wants.

As long as Federal dollars are used to finance art projects, Congress will have the responsibility to its constituents to determine what type of art taxpayer dollars will support.

The Press is such as the public demands, and the public demands bad newspapers because it has been badly educated.

It seems to me that the surest way to remove from the stage really undesirable plays, is for the public to refuse to go to see them. Censorship by law has always seemed to me too difficult and complicated where art of any kind is concerned.

When I was in school, they say everybody can do art. And I was, like, a little bit obstinate - not an anarchist, but I was always asking questions. I said, 'Isn't art supposed to be difficult?' If we can all do art, then it's not really art. It's supposed to be difficult.