Artistic Controversy Quotes

To tell you the truth, I am rather perplexed by the concept of 'art'. What one person considers to be 'art' is often not 'art' to another. 'Beautiful' and 'ugly' are old-fashioned concepts that are seldom applied these days; perhaps justifiably, who knows? Something repulsive, which gives you a moral hangover, and hurts your ears or eyes, may well be art. Only 'kitsch' is not art - we're all agreed about that. Indeed, but what is 'kitsch'? If only I knew!

If artists didn't exist in the United States, conservative politicians would have to invent them.

Knowing record labels and knowing the kinds of things they would object to-they just object to everything that's interesting.

All of a sudden I got a vision of Guernica - Pablo Picasso's painting, which is one of my all-time favorite paintings in the world. I remember reading that it was very controversial at the time - some people said even used the word "childlike drawing" - and all of a sudden I thought, "This is like Guernica in Los Angeles!" And then it all made sense to me. It was all the elements that are the Southland.

I always said God was against art and I still believe it.

'Certifiably Jonathan' contrives crises for its subject - a bid to get his paintings into MOMA, among others.

[I am not for] spending the public money in the encouragement of the Fine Arts. Whether it is to be painting or sculpture, or both; if painting, what sort of painting, what are to be the subjects chosen, and who are to be the artists employed? All these questions furnish ample food for discussion, difference, and dispute.

Some people feel that it's controversial if I say that because my dad is known as a political artist. But I don't really believe that he was a political artist. I think some of his songs were political, and I think they were incredible because he was able to make art that was political and that wasn't pedantic. But I think he was unique in being able to do that.

Scott Medlock. Some say he's a genius, some say he's a fool. I say he's the Jim Morrison of sports art, and proud to say, one of my closest friends.

There are artists with palettes and easels selling the kind of modern art that Soviet art critics used to critique with bulldozers. Judging by the paintings I saw, the Soviets were right the first time.

I have always felt that my work is religious, not sacrilegious.

Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity.

Wilde is the greatest force for evil that has appeared in Europe during the last 350 years.

Any authentic work of art must start an argument between the artist and his audience.

Great art comes from great artists. There’s a bunch of people that are hurt that still couldn’t have made the album that was super-polarizing and redefined the sound of radio.

For years, Ono's work - musical and otherwise - was, in large part, dismissed and derided; at best, it was often misunderstood.

The U.S. museums weren't looking at my paintings at all - they hated them, irredeemably. People metaphorically threw up when they saw my work! They thought I was enlarging comics, or just copying them.

I really feel that artists or musicians are controversial people. Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. If people are not doing that, they're not artists - they're artisans.

There are people who would rather choke than go see my movies. They write me letters all the time.

An aesthetic movement with a revolutionary dynamism and no popular appeal should proceed quite otherwise than by public scandal, publicity stunt, noisy expulsion and excommunication.

There is a big difference between The Merchant of Venice and a photograph of two males of different races in an erotic pose on a marble table top.

Gauguin is creepy - let's just face it. He goes off into the Pacific, and he's looking at these young girls, and the colonial gaze: It's just really problematic.

I think a lot of the most interesting work in art and in films are often kind of polarized opinions and affect people in very different ways, which may be less successful commercially, but they elicit a dialogue that's quite interesting.

In art, scandal is a false narrative, a smoke screen that camouflages rather than reveals. When we don't know what we're seeing, we overreact.

Hey, I didn't make a big deal out of Hotel California. The 18 million people that bought it did.