Political correctness may make for smooth edges, but it does little for the imagination and nothing for the arts. Writers work best when they are exploring at the outer limits of what is traditional, acceptable, or conventional.
I've never claimed that this is investment art. When we first started out, all the art colleges and universities across the country would sort of badmouth what we were doing. It's funny that a lot of them now are sending us letters saying, 'We may not totally agree with the way you paint, but we appreciate what you're doing, because you're sending literally thousands of people into art colleges.'
As an artist, even if you are putting out something really dark and disturbing, that's good because it's opening a discussion. Always in the back of my mind is this thought that the world has to be a better place with you in it.
I don't want to talk about negative, dark things. The only thing I've got against stuff like Marilyn Manson is, they make unbelievable videos and unbelievable images.
As taxpayers, we have quietly accepted the fact that our taxes will be spent to pay big bucks for all sorts of ugly, twisted metal to be displayed in front of or inside government buildings, in the name of 'art' that was obviously never meant to give the public any enjoyment and often represented a thumbing of the artist's nose at the public.
At the drop of a hat, people have begun to take offence. You can't write, paint, make films without worrying about some faction or other whose 'sentiments' will be hurt!
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.
Art has an obligation to offend
In New York, Catholic groups have forced an art gallery to shut down an exhibition of a six-foot image of Jesus in chocolate. So, the Archbishop of New York was very upset. He said, 'It is appalling to make Jesus out of food! Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go bake some communion wafers.'
There's always that argument to make - that you're in better company historically if people don't understand what you're doing.
It never hurt Lenny Bruce's career to get arrested for swearing. It did back in the time, but he broke those doors down by doing the stuff that he believed in.
I have a soft spot for art that, in terms of subject matter and material, is in bad taste.
I decided to make one of the most controversial songs that I could. I want to get under people's skin.
I think you don't do work for controversy alone, and whenever you do new work which people don't understand and they say it is done to create controversy.
Animation is not just for children - it's also for adults who take drugs.
I think it's wonderful that people in pickup trucks are buying two flats of dog food and a copy of 'Bastard.' I want my view of the world to be right up there next to gallon boxes of Tide.
In England, we have this saying about Marmite: people either love it or hate it. That's like a lot of the movie work I've done. People either find it repulsive or find it really interesting and get engaged in it.
Stanley Kubrick made Shelly Duvall go crazy during 'The Shining.' It's like one of the best performances ever. Maybe he shouldn't have gone that far, but I love that movie.
To most women art is a form of scandal.
I was roundly criticized for being in and around rock & roll music at its inception. It was the devil's music: it would make your teeth fall out and your hair turn blue, whatever the hell. You get through that.
I like to create provocative imagery. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it goes awry.
Mapplethorpe presented the body as a sexual object, separating it from the humanity of the person. He added nothing to photography as a medium. I hold his work in low regard.
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.
Much of modern art is devoted to lowering the threshold of what is terrible. By getting us used to what, formerly, we could not bear to see or hear, because it was too shocking, painful, or embarrassing, art changes morals.
Concerning First Amendment fetishism - A federal subsidy for a photo of a crucifix suspended in a jar of urine is fine, but religious figures on stamps are offensive.
