Artistic Elitism Quotes

It does not seem that the contradiction which exists between the aristocratic function of art and the democratic structure of modern society can ever be resolved.

If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

In TV, film, and music there's a lot of snobbery, and I don't like it. I've never been a cultural snob.

As a longtime fan of talk radio, I'm very worried about the low opinion that conservative hosts and callers have of the American artist. Art is portrayed as a scam, a rip-off and snow job pushed by snobbish elites.

Some people act as though art that is for a mass audience is not good art, and I think this has been a very negative thing. I know that I have wanted very much to write books that are accessible to the widest audience possible.

In my vocabulary there are two bad words: art and good taste.

Money messes up everything. It ruins art. The second you start putting price tags on this stuff, it's... Art isn't for just the wealthy. It's for everybody to enjoy.

Once avant-garde artists receive official recognition, they start a double life. In one, they inspire younger artists to do more. In the other, they inspire a mass of imitators who make the work respectable and exclusionary. The artists and their art become intellectual brand names.

I don't mind what the market is, but why is it vapid? If they're such a bunch of idiots, why don't you show them good music instead? They're not going to know the difference.

Today, [theatre's] more likely to be consciously not aimed at the public, but at a more sophisticated or educated public. . . . The result is that some of the sheer humanity has leaked out of the enterprise.

The number of contemporary artists who appeal to me is infinitesimal.

Where in the wide history of the world do we find art created by the excessively wealthy, powerful, or educated?

For this reason poets and artists developed the doctrine of Art for Art's Sake. The community did not appear to need them, so, tit for tat, they did not need the community. This being granted, it was no longer necessary or even desirable to make one's poetry either intelligible or sympathetic to the community.

For me, there has always been a disconnect with the sort of elitist structure of the high-art world - and my distaste for that is at odds with my feeling that art should aspire to do great things.

The art house is an elitist idea.

I used to be a very serious pianist, and I was one of the snot-nosed classical ones who was appalled by nightmares of Ethel Merman and trombones blasting in the background and who knows what else.

Art forms of the past were really considered elitist. Bach did not compose for the masses, neither did Beethoven. It was always for patrons, aristocrats, and royalty. Now we have a sort of democratic version of that, which is to say that the audience is so splintered in its interests.

I just feel like everyone and their mother thinks they can be an artist. You can't. Sorry. I know I was born to be one.

I believe in the popularizing of art. But when you get right down to it, it's a bit of an elitist world. Not just economically elitist - how many people read poetry?

For all the splendours of the world's greatest galleries, visitors are likely to be kept at arm's length, spectators of a world that can seem too rarefied to let them in.

As a schoolboy, poetry seemed defined by preciousness. It was all very rarefied.

Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community.

I hate the whole group of artists who are so hermetic and completely indecipherable on some level and they're all proud of themselves for it. It's like, how obnoxious, how pretentious. And that's part of my mission as an artist is to kick down those people or make fun of that type of high horse attitude.

I thought actors were artists and that artists had to be European.

Art is head space that is very exclusive: it shuts people out; other people cease to exist.