Andres Serrano Quotes

Well to be perfectly frank with you I never created art or have done demonstrations for anyone before myself artistically. I always do it to try to push my own envelope to be the best I can be.

In Japan, I am famous in certain special circles - mainly as someone who is trying to break down and enlighten the conventions of Japanese art.

Any artist should stay challenged as long as possible.

You don't have to compose a masterpiece every time, but I think the challenge of art is always searching for something different, searching for a new sensitivity, a new perspective, a new vision.

Art has an obligation to offend

I think that my responsibility to my art is to try to get it right or to push the boundaries of what I'm able to do in any way.

A violent scene is art, as much as a sex scene is art. For me, all the scenes were a challenge.

When I think of the Harlem Renaissance, I think of bright colors, and bold, dynamic art. African American artists of the period were, in large measure, breaking out of the constrictions white society had set for them. They were claiming and remaking their own images, and doing so in bold and striking ways.

The key to attempting to create art in some aspect is also knowing that it will turn some people off.

Abstract expressionism was the first American art that was filled with anger as well as beauty.

As artists, you always want to push yourself. There's always new territory.

The idea of content in art is today merely a hindrance, a nuisance, a subtle or not so subtle philistinism.

Kitsch is art that follows established rules in a time when all rules in art are put into question by each artist.

There is no such thing as exaggerated art. I even believe that there is salvation only in extreme.

No doubt, it is useful for an artist to know all the forms of art which have preceded or which accompany his. That is a sign of strength if it is a question of looking for a stimulus or recognizing mistakes he must avoid.

For me, what I've always seen in writers and artists is the courage it takes to make an original work of art. I think the real risks in literature are linguistic and intellectual, and I hope we can highlight those, as well as political courage.

All art is based on non-conformity.

The task of art today is to bring chaos into order. Artistic productivity is the capacity for being voluntarily involuntary.

The motion picture made in Hollywood, if it is to create art at all, must do so within such strangling limitations of subject and treatment that it is a blind wonder it ever achieves any distinction beyond the purely mechanical slickness of a glass and chromium bathroom.

There are so many different ways to make art. And so many good stories. You don't have to have a budget. I feel like it's super possible these days for people to make anything, no matter who you are or where you come from. And that's really exciting. I'm excited to see people around me pushing boundaries in that way, not letting certain structures define them or what art they can make.

The whole point of art school is that you're going to be able to have nudes all day long and a teacher who is there to move you. It's great.

Artists are free to push boundaries to make art. But when pushing boundaries is their only aim, the result is usually bad art.

Art like life, should be free, since both are experimental.

See, if you put a musician in a place where he has to do something different from what he does all the time, then he can do that - but he's got to think differently in order to do it. He's got to play above what he knows - far above it. I've always told the musicians in my band to play what they know and then play above that. Because then anything can happen, and that's where great art and music happens.

Only the very greatest art invigorates without consoling.