Robert Crumb Quotes

I really don't believe in the word 'selling out.'

Corporations have steered the industry into what it wants, and a lot of times they will make artists record what it wants or to make songs talk to who they want to talk to. But sometimes the heart and the head have to be able to talk and deal with a situation that's evident.

It seems to me like a perversion of talent for an artist of any kind to further the corporate structure of America or the personal interests of the morons and thieves who run it.

You may sell your work, but not your soul.

They can buy talent. You can't buy it for yourself, but you can buy other people's talent to serve your purposes. And once an artist does that, he becomes like a plaything of the rich.

People who love jazz musicians love us when we play what we want to play and we're starving. But as soon as you commercialize your sound like Wes Montgomery did, the jazz fans and the critics are down on you!

Hopefully this is going to be a trend, the beginning of a movement to reclaim theater for the artist and not commerce. I think there's a level of fatigue. Artists are tired of having to create work that's then coopted by commercial demands. When you begin souping up the car, the car no longer feels like your own.

I'll bet Shakespeare compromised himself a lot; anybody who's in the entertainment industry does to some extent.

It's not in the interest of the artist to think of his market.

I think that I have sold out sometimes.

What happens with artists, or people who start off doing things for the right reasons, is that you slowly start to paint yourself into a corner by doing what people outside of the creative world are asking you to do, and I think that's antithetical to being an artist.

I love Michael Bay movies. I don't think I'd be selling out if I did one. I happen to like his movies. I think selling out is doing something you don't believe in, and you're doing it for a selfish purpose.

I know, as an actor, you have to negotiate, but I can't handle the whole idea that art and commerce are synonymous. It drives me nuts.

One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.

If somebody else wanted to do a song for McDonald's, that's up to them. I wouldn't do something like that, but whatever.

It doesn't matter even if I am slow or fast as long as my films are honest and carries my integrity.

I had walked away from the music industry because I had a certain integrity and all that.

What people who don't create don't understand, is that once you take money from the machine, the machine [movie industry] owns you.

I heard someone from the music business saying they are no longer looking for talent, they want people with a certain look and a willingness to cooperate. I thought, that's interesting, because I believe a total unwillingness to cooperate is what is necessary to be an artist — not for perverse reasons, but to protect your vision. The considerations of a corporation, especially now, have nothing to do with art or music. That's why I spend my time now painting.

The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea... The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.

The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.

They don't want you until you have made a name, and by the time you have made a name, you have developed some kind of talent they can't use. All they will do is spoil it, if you let them.

Others may be able to accept standards from another, but an artist is a person who decides.

The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist.

I'm selfish, I think. I think an artist has to be. I'm not worried about what people think. I play the parts that I find interesting. It'd bother me more to be just pigeonholed into doing what people think is ethical or that's boring to me. I don't pick parts with that in mind, I just find interesting stories. If it's interesting to me, then I do it.