Artistic arrogance Quotes

Most poets are elitist dregs more concerned with proving their skill with a dictionary than communicating ideas with impact.

I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face.

So much of the hubris that surrounded conceptual art in the 1950s through '70s was that it had this arrogant presupposition that pointing in and of itself was a creative act. It never rigorously politically and socially analyzed the fact that the luxury to point is something that so many people throughout the world don't have.

As for borrowing Mr. Whistler's ideas about art, the only thoroughly original ideas I have heard him express have had reference to his own superiority as a painter over painters greater than himself.

Every artist wants to feel like they're still valid in a contemporary way. But you can't be so arrogant not to think that people who have thrown down their hard-earned money don't want to see and hear the things they want.

There are some centuries which - apart from everything else - in the art and other disciplines presume to remake everything because they know how to make nothing.

The trend towards pure art betrays not arrogance, as is often thought, but modesty. Art that has rid itself of human pathos is a thing without consequence.

If you look at how great artists of the past, like Beethoven, for example dealt with art and morality, you see that there was torture and pain in their work, but there was also dignity in the way that was dealt with. So I don't buy this contemporary notion that the only way to be artistic is to be arrogant, offensive or immoral.

I think there's a kind of built-in arrogance to anyone who considers themself an artist. They want to feel as though like they can run the whole spectrum. "I can do it all. I can do minimalism, and I can do classical art." Well, that's not true.

I couldn't see his face, because the light came in from behind him and he was in shadow, and he said, "I am Picasso." And I said, "Well, so what?