French photography was basically poetic, and mine was vulgar and brash and violent, except that there's never any violence in the photographs: it's only in the photographic style.
When a finished work of 20th century sculpture is placed in an 18th century garden, it is absorbed by the ideal representation of the past, thus reinforcing political and social values that are no longer with us.
I want to fuse the abrasive and the beautiful.
A lot of what I've done as Nine Inch Nails has been governed by fear. I was trying to keep the songs in a framework that was tough, and I learnt a lot from Jesus and Mary Chain about how to bury nice pop songs in unlistenable noise - the idea being if you can get behind that wall, you find there's a pearl inside.
I like playing with light and shade. I like saying awful things in very pretty ways.
It's a weird city because the uglier the weather, the more beautiful the city. And the uglier the buildings, the more coherent the city.
Absolute ugliness is admitted as rarely as perfect beauty; but degrees of it more or less distinct are associated with whatever has the nature of death and sin, just as beauty is associated with what has the nature of virtue and of life.
I'm intrigued with figuring out the places [where] the horrible and the beautiful meet - that aesthetic fascinates me.
The uglier, older, meaner, iller, poorer I get, the more I wish to take my revenge by doing brilliant color, well arranged, resplendent.
It's tough to write beautifully about ugly things, but Mitchell S. Jackson makes it look easy.
Beauty in art is often nothing but ugliness subdued.
I'm really interested in the form, putting one piece up against another and finding something corroborative in another voice. I've done a lot of that.
I don't think that there's that much difference between a photograph of a fist up someone's ass and a photograph of carnations in a bowl.
Contrasting styles is always the most fun to watch.
This world is ugly, and it's supposed to be, and it has to be in order for art to lead to grandness and beauty.
I really like dark music and darkness in general and cynicism and pessimism and negativity because it allows you to create an even bigger contrast.
I believe very much in a dialogue between buildings - I believe it's always been there. I think buildings have different identities and live very well next to each other. We always have the shock of the new, and that's fine. The renaissance style is totally different from the medieval, and they have a dialogue across time.
There will be no propriety in the spectacle of an elegant interior approached by a low mean entrance.
With the video for Boulevard of Broken Dreams we were going for something a bit like Ladykillers, you know? Pretty and demented at the same time...like me!
The beautiful remains so in ugly surroundings.
For Debussy the musician and the man I have had profound admiration, but by nature I'm different from him. I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of the symbolism of Debussy.
A noble space, unlike any other of our time, for it is both strong and delicate. It seems to call at once for a Boeing 747 and for a string quartet.
Our sound is really hard metal but looks cute, and in some parts of the song the lyrics are really cute.
We try to write things that work on a variety of levels at the same time: A sleek exterior with a turbulent lyric.
You pass the old L.A. County jail, which is surprisingly beautiful. It's got a handsome stone facade and stately columns. The new L.A. County jail - called The Twin Towers - isn't beautiful at all; it's a stucco panopticon the color of sick flesh.
