Artistic Protest Quotes

The best art is political and you ought to be able to make it unquestionably political and irrevocably beautiful at the same time.

I'm an old guy, and I was protesting during the Vietnam War. We killed fifty Asians for every loyal American. Every artist worth a damn in this country was terribly opposed to that war, finally, when it became evident what a fiasco and meaningless butchery it was. We formed sort of a laser beam of protest. Every painter, every writer, every stand-up comedian, every composer, every novelist, every poet aimed in the same direction. Afterwards, the power of this incredible new weapon dissipated.

In this new world where art is willfully misinterpreted to score points and to distract, simply doing the work of an artist has become a political act.

I like art. It's another way to rebel.

As I say, I as an abstract artist was active politically.

Poetry, being supremely useless, by its very existence represents a protest against the so-called 'real world' of busy-ness and moneymaking, so we must embrace, salute and support our poets.

laws and conditions appropriate to a mechanical creation, against this I raise my sword-pen.

Use your art to fight.

Painting is not made to decorate apartments. It's an offensive and defensive weapon against the enemy. (about Guernica).

As a matter of fact, wherever I find that law exists, I will not perform in that state or in that part of the world.

All political art is bad – all good art is political.

My father was a businessman, but my mother was an intellectual. She cared about culture, politics, and philosophy, so I became interested in the protest aspect of Latin American art.

As a political artist, I think you have to learn how to create art, no matter what your ideology is.

With Pussy Riot - this was a prank! It was a brilliant, artistically gifted prank. But they didn't expect to go to prison! They were college girls who became political prisoners for two years. That makes them very similar to the people who were "just going to a protest one day" and got arrested. They had no idea they were risking the rest of their lives. Because you're never the same after you've spent two years in a gulag.