Yoko Ono Quotes

A true artist is always out of his time.

I'm not the average artist.

No artist is ahead of his time. He is his time; it is just that others are behind the times.

Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?

I've realised that if I aim for a successful record, I probably won't have any success. But if I keep making weird things, then hopefully the audiences will come to us.

In art, all who have done something other than their predecessors have merited the epithet of revolutionary; and it is they alone who are masters.

I'm often accused of being ahead of my time, but it's simply not true. The truth is that everybody else is behind.

I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement - it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.

The more far-out artists, the better.

I'm not belittling the art world. Not at all. I take it quite seriously, actually. But the logic of art is a vanguard logic that pressures art to incorporate the quotient of risk.

An artist is always out of step with the time. He has to be.

All art is based on non-conformity.

Great art stretches the taste, it doesn't follow tastes.

To make great movies, there is an element of risk. You have to say, 'Well, I am going to make this film, and it is not really a sure thing.'

The most wonderful time to be in the art world was in the sixties, because it wasn't a business - there was no business of doing art.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

I really admire artists that are willing to take a different approach and a different angle to their shows.

It's high time for the art world to admit that the avant-garde is dead. It was killed by my hero, Andy Warhol, who incorporated into his art all the gaudy commercial imagery of capitalism (like Campbell's soup cans) that most artists had stubbornly scorned.

To create is to resist; to resist is to create.

I believe that a creative career is only as good as the risks that you take with it.

It's easy to make something avant garde. To do something in the traditional way is much more brave in the sense that you're - your technique is so much more exposed because there's not all this flashy stuff to distract the viewer.

Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

There was a lot of great writing couples, but I try to do it all myself. And it was practically impossible, but I still managed to be ahead of my time.

A great artist is always before his time or behind it.