Hans Haacke Quotes

• Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.

  Hans Haacke

  Educational, Museums, Views

  "Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre, and Elsewhere". Book by Michael Kimmelman, 1998.

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• An artist is not an isolated system. In order to survive he has to interact continuously with the world around him... Theoretically there are no limits to his involvement.

  Hans Haacke

  Artist, Order, Survival

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• When works of art are presented like rare butterflies on the walls, they're decontextualized. We admire their beauty, and I have nothing against that, per se. But there is more to art than that.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, Wall, Butterfly

  "Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre, and Elsewhere". Book by Michael Kimmelman, 1998.

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• Art in the art world, and culture in general, are branches of the media, which produces our political and social thinking climate.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, Thinking, Media

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• In order to gain some insight into the forces that elevate certain products to the level of 'works of art' it is helpful - among other investigations - to look into the economic and political underpinnings of the institutions, individuals and groups who share in the control of power.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, Order, Political

  Hans Haacke, Museum of Modern Art (Oxford, England), Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum (1978). “Hans Haacke: Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, 1978; Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1979”

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• Art-making is just another part of the consciousness industry.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, Art Making, Consciousness

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• Artists and art institutions have to learn how to play hardball. A democratic society needs a democratic art and we have a right to demand it.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, Play, Needs

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• The artist's business requires an involvement in practically everything... The total scope of information he receives day after day is of concern.

  Hans Haacke

  Business, Artist, Information

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• There was an exhibition in Munich in 1937, 'Degenerate Art,' which included work by Klee, Kandinsky, Beckmann and many others. The work was called 'sick' and put in the trash heap. The sentiments expressed toward contemporary art by Jesse Helms, Pat Robertson and Mayor Giuliani recall the language used by the Nazis.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, Sick, Exhibitions

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• It would be bypassing the issue to say that the artist's business is to work with this and that material or manipulate the findings of perceptual psychology, and that the rest should be left to other professions.

  Hans Haacke

  Artist, Issues, Psychology

  Hans Haacke (2016). “Working Conditions: The Writings of Hans Haacke”, p.15, MIT Press

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• Museums are not normally presenting the works on the walls as provocations to work. It's more like going to a Jacuzzi.

  Hans Haacke

  Wall, Museums, Jacuzzi

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• If you look at the size of the art world in terms of the money that is being transacted compared to other parts of the 'consciousness industry,' it is minuscule. But if you look at what happens in this small sector, how it rubs off on the rest of it, it is astonishing.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, Money, Looks

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• I have a particular interest in corporations that give themselves a cultural aura and are in other areas suspect. Philip Morris presents itself in New York as the lover of culture while it turns out that if you look behind the scenes, it is also a prime funder of Jesse Helms, someone who is very hostile to the arts.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, New York, Giving

  "A Giant artistic Gibe at Jesse Helms" by Roberta Smith, New York Times, April 20, 1990.

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• What I'm very upset about is the attempt to dictate to museums what they show, and the statements made by politicians in Washington that have curtailed the freedom of the National Endowment for the Arts. The attention to those issues is deflected by the spin of my supposedly having trivialized the Holocaust.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, Museums, Issues

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• A liberal public is interesting to have as an audience. It is for that very reason that corporations make such an effort to ally themselves with cultural institutions.

  Hans Haacke

  Interesting, Effort, Allies

  "The Way We Live Now: 3-26-00: Questions for Hans Haacke; School for Scandal" by Deborah Solomon, www.nytimes.com. March 26, 2000.

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• Whenever the medium of photography is useful for a particular task, I use it. If another medium is more suitable I use that.

  Hans Haacke

  Photography, Tasks, Use

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• A standard line, promoted by people like Clement Greenberg,.. is that politics contaminates art, and Manet is often cited as an example of art for art's sake.

  Hans Haacke

  Art, People, Example

  "Portraits: Talking with Artists at the Met, the Modern, the Louvre, and Elsewhere". Book by Hans Haacke, 1998.

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• Trivializing the Holocaust is the last thing I want to do.

  Hans Haacke

  Holocaust, Want, Lasts

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