Art Politics Quotes

Art is about play and about transcendent meanings, not reducible to politics. ~ Rachel Kushner

I've always said that an art critic can put aside politics around art. ~ Jerry Saltz

Norman Rockwell saved my life. ~ Jane Allen Petrick

In the 19th century, you had bourgeois art without politics - an almost frozen idea of what beauty is. ~ Douglas Sirk

The challenge is to practice politics as the art of making what appears to be impossible, possible. ~ Hillary Clinton

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics. ~ August Wilson

There arose a belief in style - and in banality. Banality encompassed politics, too, because it was a common belief that politics were not worthy of art. ~ Douglas Sirk

If mass communications blend together harmoniously, and often unnoticeably, art, politics, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator
the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value, not truth value, counts. ~ Herbert Marcuse

Since the mirror of gentrification is representation in popular culture, increasingly only the gentrified get their stories told in mass ways. They look in the mirror and think it's a window, believing that corporate support for and inflation of their story is in fact a neutral and accurate picture of the world. If all art, politics, entertainment, relationships, and conversations must maintain that what is constructed and imposed by force is actually natural and neutral, then the gentrified mind is a very fragile parasite. ~ Sarah Schulman

Politics is politics; art is art. If you play a political role, you have to stop being an artist. ~ Youssou N'Dour

The idea is that human culture as broadly defined
art, politics, technology, religion, and so on
evolves in much the way biological species evolve: new cultural traits arise and may flourish or perish, and as a result whole institutions can belief systems form and change. ~ Robert Wright

The art of politics consists in knowing precisely when it is necessary to hit an opponent slightly below the belt. ~ Konrad Adenauer

There's an axiom I live by: 'There is no art without politics.' You either choose to engage it, or you choose political apathy. This ties in with ideas around real-time performance and feedback. ~ Chris Jordan

Since hip hop emerged from the South Bronx in the 1970s, it has become an international, multi-billion-dollar phenomenon. It has grown to encompass more than just rap music. Hip hop has created a culture that incorporates ethnicity, art, politics, fashion, technology and urban life." This debunks the widely accepted argument that the genre is inherently divisive. With so many factors converging to create such an intricate, informative and multi-faceted genre, whose history and impact have bridged barriers between artist and society, it is not too complicated an endeavor to understand that its relevance repudiates its notorious reputation. ~ Carlos Wallace

The more I study the things of the mind the more mathematical I find them. In them as in mathematics it is a question of quantities; they must be treated with precision. I have never had more satisfaction than in proving this in the realms of art, politics and history. ~ Hippolyte Taine

It's an honor putting art above politics. Politics can be seductive in terms of things reductive to the soul. ~ Robert Redford

Politics is the art of the possible; creativity is the art of the impossible. ~ Ben Okri

Revolutionary art need not be overtly political in content; what is more important is that it demand a new means of perception on the part of its spectators. The subject in process/on trial can thus be fundamentally transformed. Change here, at the level of individual consciousness, is a necessary element of social change. Seen in this way, the arts are not merely reflective of social relations but are productive of social relations. ~ Ann Daly

I am an anarchist in politics and an impressionist in art as well as a symbolist in literature. Not that I understand what these terms mean, but I take them to be all merely synonyms of pessimist. ~ Henry Adams

Like art and politics, gangsterism is a very important avenue of assimilation into society. ~ E.L. Doctorow

Art is supposed to inspire the highest level humankind has to offer. Politics is only agreeing on rules that one might use to engage with others, and slowly changing them with the hopes no one else will notice. ~ C.S. Johnson

Art has nothing to do with politics. It is the freest thing in the world. ~ Tatyana Tolstaya

Politics is the art of achieving political goals - of achieving what is possible in a given situation - that is, in a situation that has its conditions and its limits. ~ Adam Michnik

Politics is the art of realizing what there is to realize. ~ Adam Michnik

My art will reflect not necessarily conscious politics but the unanalysed politics of my life. ~ Carl Andre

As I got older I became a kind of sub cultural junkie, foraging around in music, street fashion and eventually art, politics and the freakier reaches of the Internet, hunting the next discovery, the next seam of underground gold. ~ Hari Kunzru

Politics is the art of the next best. ~ Otto Von Bismarck

Ah, there's a director. Astonishing, Spike Lee. A feisty guy, but a guy who's, I think, incredibly misunderstood. I think people review his politics or his color as opposed to his filmmaking sometimes. Because he's a wonderful, wonderful filmmaker and a lover of the art. ~ Brian Cox

American culture, perhaps more than any other, prizes individualism. Our narratives of art, politics, and business idolize the person who triumphs against the odds, with only himself or herself to answer to. The lone wolf. The stranger in town. The maverick. The plucky kid. The Final Girl. You've only got yourself, in the end. It's all up to you. ~ Andi Zeisler

Folk art has never been much about politics; it's about action and utility. ~ Cass McCombs

Part of my desire to play music was because I wanted to escape the art world and the politics of it; the petty gossip-y art world. But you know, I feel like they're both equal forms of expression. ~ Kim Gordon

There are so many wizards of the computer, stock market, test tube, and spectator sport, but so few of the art of life. ~ Mantak Chia

Entertainment is the devil's substitute for joy. ~ Leonard Ravenhill

But in practical affairs, particularly in politics, men are needed who combine human experience and interest in human relations with a knowledge of science and technology. ~ Max Born

We have not eternal allies and we have not perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and peretual and those interests it is out duty to follow. ~ Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston

I think art is a consolation regardless of its content. It has the power to move and make you feel like you're not. ~ Jeff Tweedy

Great art is not instant. It comes from experience, it comes from a place within. If you're trying to generate material, then you're going to generate stuff. It's not going to be great, it's just going to be stuff. ~ Keenen Ivory Wayans

The work of art is the exaggeration of an idea. ~ Andre Gide

Roman Polanski is a man who cares deeply about his art and its place in this world. What happened to him on his incredible path is filled with tragedy, and most men would have collapsed. Instead, he became a great artist and continues to make great films. ~ Harvey Weinstein

True alchemy lies in this formula: 'Your memory and your senses are but the nourishment of your creative impulse'. ~ Arthur Rimbaud

Politics in the United States consists of the struggle between those whose change has been arrested by success or failure, on one side, and those who are still engaged in changing themselves, on the other. Agitators of arrested metamorphosis versus agitators of continued metamorphosis. The former have the advantage of numbers (since most people accept themselves as successes or failures quite early), the latter of vitality and visibility (since self-transformation, though it begins from within, with ideology, religion, drugs, tends to express itself publicly through costume and jargon). ~ Harold Rosenberg

Art can only be truly art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life. ~ Margaret Fuller

The power of the artform is stronger than stone, the poet says, and chooses the sonnet, a form concerned with argument and persuasion, to say so. This sonnet, he says, will last longer than any gravestone-and you'll be made shinier, brighter, by it. In this form it will-and therefore you will-avoid destruction by war, history, time generally; it'll even keep you alive after death; in fact it'll form a place for you to live, not die, where you'll be seen in the eyes of and the context of this love right to the end of time. ~ Ali Smith

Absolutely. I think that this is - politics is a tough business. I describe it as a full contact sport. You have to be prepared to get in there and mix it up. ~ John Thune

How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America's anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks of history. But they swung it. A recent poll tells us that one in two Americans now believe Saddam was responsible for the attack on the World Trade Centre. ~ John Le Carre

My definition [of genius] would be about being completely involved in your art form. So that's outside of sciences. Within the arts it's about taking people on a journey, being able to involve me completely-whether you're singing a song, whether it's in the theater, whether you're dancing-if you can make me forget I'm sitting in a seat, that's my definition of genius. ~ Russell Crowe

Unless we insist that politics is imagination and mind, we will learn that imagination and mind are politics, and of a kind we will not like. ~ Lionel Trilling

Paradoxical as it may at first appear, the fact is that, as W. H. George has said, scientific research is an art, not a science. ~ William Ian Beardmore Beveridge

Melbourne, where I grew up, is one of the street art capitals of the world. Something about discovering freshly painted walls always fills me with optimism; it's autonomous and democratic, and reminds me that maybe people are paying attention after all. ~ Penelope Mitchell

For me, art begins when there is something left that cannot be explained. ~ Moshe Kupferman

I begrudge making a career out of clothes, but Lyndon likes bright colors and dramatic styles that do the most for one's figure, and I try to please him," she was to say. "I've really tried to learn the art of clothes, because you don't sell for what you're worth unless you look well. ~ Robert A. Caro

We can never be entirely original, as artists or as people. The genius and vision of those who came before us is too great for us to digress from entirely. Though, as creatures that are compelled to test and surpass our own creative abilities, we must always strive for that originality in everything we do in order to move the world forward. ~ Jessica Lave

Political realists see the world as it is: an arena of power politics moved primarily by perceived immediate self-interests, where morality is rhetorical rationale for expedient action and self-interest. ~ Saul D. Alinsky

Design isn't Art. It's not about creating beautiful or thought-provoking things for the sake of it. Design is a discipline creating communication with a purpose. ~ Ben Hunt

The peculiarity of the evidence of mathematical truths is, that all the argument is on one side. There are no objections, and no answers to objections. But on every subject on which difference of opinion is possible, the truth depends on a balance to be struck between two sets of confliting reasons. Even in natural philosophy, there is always some other explanation possible of the same facts; some geocentric theory instead of heliocentric, some phlogiston instead of oxygen; and it has to be shown why that other theory cannot be the true on: and until this is shown, and until we know how it is shown, we do not understand the grounds of our opinion. But when we turn to subjects infinitely more complicated, to morals, religion, politics, social relations, and the business of life, three-fourths of the arguments for every disputed opinion consist in dispelling the appearances which favour some opinion different from it. ~ John Stuart Mill

The rich don't have to kill to eat. They employ people, as they call it. The rich don't do evil themselves. They pay. People do all they can to please them, and everybody's happy. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Art can heal it if art is allowed to exist. And if art is slowly wiped off the face of the planet, then what tools do we have to reach people, to appeal to them and all of their senses? ~ Madonna Ciccone

There are times when American politics seems like little more than two groups in a fever to prevent each other from trespassing upon their respective soothing versions of unreality ~ Matt Taibbi

Madonna remains the most visible performer on the planet, as well as one of the wealthiest, but would anyone seriously say that artistic self-development is her primary motivating principle? She is too busy with Kabbalah, fashion merchandising, adoption melodramas, the gym, and ill-starred horseback riding to study art. ~ Camille Paglia

Prior to my second stint in Perpignan, I was a fine diner and as I saw it, food was art. At vocational school, I was being taught how to cook, but I was frustrated by how basic the dishes were. I was like a kid who had grown up listening to Chopin, then showed up at music school, never having actually played an instrument. I mean, when you listen to Chopin all the time, you want to become Chopin. And then you go to music school and all you're doing is plunking out do...re... mi for hours at a time. It's boring as hell, and not why you enrolled. I was impatient to create great meals and not so excited about starting with the basics. Why were we spending hours learning how to hold a knife or mine a shallot when we could be making nouvelle cuisine? True, I didn't know how to cut a chicken in eight pieces or make a bechamel. But in the two- and three-start restaurants I had been to, they were way over the bechamel. Still, there I was, in school, making the most basic of dishes--salade Nicoise, potato-leek soup, an omelette. ~ Eric Ripert

Policy decisions on climate change are being deliberated every day by those without full knowledge of the science, and often with intentional misinformation spawned by special interests. ~ James Hansen

Medicine is not merely a science but an art. The character of the physician may act more powerfully upon the patient than the drugs employed. ~ Paracelsus

Freedom just around the corner for you, but with the truth so far off, what good will it do? ~ Bob Dylan

When Margot died after a car accident in which my sister was also seriously injured in November 1970, I sat on a hill behind a friend's house in Greymouth trying to get my head around having to identify the body of my university sweetheart. Yvonne was the only one who came with condolences (Paul Caffyn) ~ Theresa Sjoquist

Nothing is more difficult than the art of maneuvering for advantageous positions. ~ Sun Tzu

The survival of my own ideas may not be as important as a condition I might create for others' ideas to be realized. ~ Mel Chin

The scientific spirit, the contempt of tradition, the lack of discipline and the exaltation of the individual have very nearly made an end of art. It can only be restored by the love of beauty, the reverence for tradition, the submission to discipline and the rigor of self-control. ~ Kenyon Cox

Gratitude is not a normal feature of political life. ~ David Maxwell Fyfe, 1st Earl Of Kilmuir

In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded ... He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him. ~ Oscar Wilde

For the Chinese, the Greeks, the Mayans, or the Egyptians, nature was a living totality, a creative being. For this reason, art, according to Aristotle, is imitation; the poet imitates the creative gesture of nature. ~ Octavio Paz

What is happening in politics today is a similar process to what happened in the medical world a few decades ago: realizing that there's more to healing than just addressing symptoms. Primary paradigm when it comes to dealing with political and social disease is allopathic: Pass a law, lock someone up, engage in warfare. And the state of the world today makes it clear that such allopathic measures have not exactly brought peace to all. ~ Marianne Williamson

Not by way of the forced and worn formula of Romaticism, but throught the closeness of an imagination that has never broken kinship with nature. Art must accept such gifts, and revaluate the giver. ~ Alain LeRoy Locke