Artistic Provocation Quotes

I put it [picture "A still life of a pear" by Edouard Manet] there [on the wall, next to the picture "Jupiter and Thetis" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

When Michael Werner saw a painting of mine, such as Die grosse Nacht im Eimer, which back then nobody wanted and everybody thought was ridiculous, he realized that this was the right provocation, that it represented the feeling of the times in the right way.

Anything can be misinterpreted. People can look at Christ on a cross and think, This is an image of murder, this is violent, this has sexual imagery in it. And it just - I think it's my job as an artist to be out there pushing people's buttons and making them question everything.

'Last House' offended a lot of people. The results in the theaters, even in Boston, reminded me a bit of things from when I was studying Theater of the Absurd, and the rise and the appearance of Ionesco plays, and things like that.

It's quite true that what I am aiming at, even when I take portraits, is to get a scandalous picture. I would love to be a paparazzo.

As [John Heartfield] was playing with the fire of appearance, reality took fire around him... The scraps of photographs that he formerly manoeuvred for the pleasure of stupification, under his fingers began to signify.

When I found out after that first successful exhibition that the gallery wanted me to do another show like the first one, I come out two years later with four 6-foot drawings of classical nudes masturbating. The gallery director flipped the freak out!

My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.

Art should offend people because art should challenge people.

I don't want to paint rainbows: I want to make art that disturbs identity and challenges authority.

A good picture, any picture, has to be bristling with razor blades.

Predominantly in the West, if you can only have creative voices that are either black or white, I'm going to say whatever the f - k I want, because no one's going before you, and if no one's coming after you, I'm just going to be the freakiest of all freaks!

I want art to make me think. In order to do that, it may piss me off, or make me uncomfortable. That promotes awareness and change, or at least some discussion.

The more horrific works came out of a feeling that everyone accepted my stuff too easily. I was deliberately trying to be antagonistic towards collectors and critics.