So begins a question which has of late become more and more urgent: what is the relation of aesthetics to politics?
All songs, all pieces of art, reflect the world that they were made in and the values of those artists and the hopes and aspirations of the people who listen to that music and who made that music.
The first question I ask myself when something doesn't seem to be beautiful is why do I think it's not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.
All the arts, to varying degrees, involve some kind of a compromise. This being so, how far need the radio dramatist go to meet the public without losing sight of himself and his own standards of value?
Architecture is an expression of values.
I've always loved reading manifestos. Collectively, they represent a triumph of style.
I'm not making films just to be bold.
Now, I'm not saying I'm fashionable, but there are sociological interests that matter to me, things that are theoretical, political, intellectual and also concerned with vanity and beauty that we all think about but that I try to mix up and translate into fashion.
I think that a society lives or dies according to its respect for - for its art.
Style is not neutral; it gives moral directions.
External beauty is a bizarre thing to me.
Generally, the French highly promote culture and the arts, and photography is in their blood.
I am an artist, art has no color and no sex.
The reason I don't like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am in the real.
The worst state of affairs is when science begins to concern itself with art.
I think there's very little interesting in art that is not transgressive in some way. And I don't think that's a very revolutionary thing to say.
All art is a struggle to be, in a particular sort of way, virtuous.
One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
The Eisenhower Memorial competition and project have stirred a remarkable polemic, the center of which is not President Eisenhower or Washington, D.C. but Mr. Gehry and the values he promulgates.
Obviously, I respect the expression of different artists. I do not judge or criticize the style of anyone.
I grew up in a modernist house, in a modernist culture. There was a love for modernism everywhere - the furniture, the books, the food, even the cutlery. So I learned very early to appreciate the value of design and the value of architecture.
I don't understand how any good art could fail to be political.
I don't make records that way, where I'm trying to please the marketplace or anything. Not because I have anything against that, it's just never been a part of my aesthetic, even when I was with the Pixies.
I live in Harlem, New York City. I am unmarried. I like 'Tristan,' goat's milk, short novels, lyric poems, heat, simple folk, boats and bullfights; I dislike 'Aida,' parsnips, long novels, narrative poems, cold, pretentious folk, buses and bridges.
But I think it is a serious issue to wonder about the other platonic absolutes of say beauty and morality.
