Lowbrow Art Quotes

The type of work I do, which is often called 'Pop Surrealism,' is very separate from Gagosian and Mary Boone type of gallery art.

Detective stories are the art-for-art's sake of yawning Philistinism.

Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn.

I have a soft spot for art that, in terms of subject matter and material, is in bad taste.

At its core, kitsch feels like something less than art; it panders to the middle and is flagrantly anti-art, though it often apes or references art. This referential, ersatz quality is why it's so fun to collect.

There is a slight problem with being a conceptual artist these days: You won't get paid. But this levels the field and takes the art of money out of the field of serious art. The only conceptual artists who would conceive of making money on the Internet are a lowbrow species known as hustlers.

Films have degenerated to their original operation as carnival amusement - they offer not drama but thrills.

I think it is good escapist entertainment even though it's bad.

The value of kitsch exists in its novelty and in its connotations to more legitimate counterparts.

If you want to look at a cheap shot, look at Mr. Koons's or Mr. Gober's art. By no definition is it art.

Too often, it is presumed that young people will only like art that they can immediately relate to. Working-class students may be steered towards popular culture like hip-hop, new media and film on the basis that they will find older art forms such as opera or ballet irrelevant.

Shakespeare was such a splendid vulgarian.

Sometimes magnificent visual art takes root in the humblest of soils. Advertisements painted on old barns, tattoos, fruit crate labels, hot rod embellishments - all these media and many other non-galleried forms have hosted and fostered esthetic delights that satisfy any rigorous definition of art.

There's nothing wrong in doing a mindless masala; it's just something I don't see myself doing.

Mark Ryden is my favorite visual artist.

I was thinking about sort of the similarities between "art movies" and lowbrow movies like kitschy sexploitation films. I think they share certain qualities, whether they're hyper-stylized or overly emotive or just very visual.