Political Art Quotes

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  Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

  Groucho Marx

  Art, Freedom, Political Will

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• Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Art, Freedom, Political

  "Don't blame Alistair Darling. He's just the brush and bucket" by Andrew Rawnsley, www.theguardian.com. July 19, 2008.

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• One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

  Plato

  Plato, War, Government

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• I am interested in a political art, that is to say an art of ambiguity, contradiction, uncompleted gestures and uncertain ending - an art (and a politics) in which optimism is kept in check, and nihilism at bay.

  William Kentridge

  Art, Optimism, Political

  Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev, William Kentridge (1998). “William Kentridge”, Societe Des Expositions Des Beaux

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• Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

  Henry Adams

  Witty, Science, Political Will

  The Education of Henry Adams ch. 24 (1907)

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• Cinema is always a political art, at the end.

  Pablo Larrain

  Art, Political, Cinema

  Source: www.chicagotribune.com

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• As a composer, I believe that music has the power to inspire a renewal of human consciousness, culture, and politics. And yet I refuse to make political art. More often than not political art fails as politics, and all too often it fails as art. To reach its fullest power, to be most moving and most fully useful to us, art must be itself.

  John Luther Adams

  Art, Moving, Believe

  "Making Music in the Anthropocene". www.slate.com. February 24, 2015.

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• My problem with political art is not that it's bad art necessarily, but that it is terrible politics.

  Peter Schjeldahl

  Art, Political, Problem

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• My argument would be that I don't think there is much that's genuinely political art that is good art.

  Thom Yorke

  Art, Thinking, Political

  "Truth in the Hands of Artists". Interview with Sarah Burton, www.alternet.org. November 23, 2003.

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• I don't really believe in political art. I feel in my heart the purpose of art transcends cultural and class and politics. I think something like the Sistine Chapel is something that goes beyond just being a Christian thing. It transcends its Christianity and becomes sort of a universal beauty. And I think that's true of music and art and literature.

  Sean Lennon

  Christian, Art, Believe

  "Sean Lennon speaks". Interview with Joel Amos, www.sheknows.com. March 22, 2010.

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• My problem with political art is not that it's bad art necessarily, but that it is terrible politics. We're talking about a closeted person with minimum contact with reality who has trouble tying his f**king shoes! And he's supposed to be political? A bus driver has a better perspective on things. Artists are completely indulgent.

  Jonathan Santlofer

  Art, Kings, Reality

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• It is difficult to make political art work.

  Thom Yorke

  Art, Work, Political

  "Duty of Expression". Interview with Sarah Burton, www.howardzinn.org. November 23, 2003.

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• Very early on I was interested in doing political art, but it was not feminist political art.

  Michelle Stuart

  Art, Feminist, Political

  "Michelle Stuart’s Mythologies". Interview with Haley Weiss, www.interviewmagazine.com. February 5, 2016.

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• But I really resist categories – that naming is a closing down of meaning. Women's art, political art – those categorisations perpetuate a certain kind of marginality which I'm resistant to. But I absolutely define myself as a feminist.

  Barbara Kruger

  Art, Feminist, Political

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• Man, says Protagoras, now has the wisdom necessary for life ... but he does not have political wisdom. At this point, people are living spread out and hence are at the mercy of stronger animals, who begin killing them off.... They seek to save themselves from the beasts by banding together and forming cities. But they do injustice to one another, at such close quarters, because they lack the political art. So, dispersed once more, they begin perishing again.

  Paul Ludwig Landsberg

  Art, Animal, Men

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• After illuminating the work of Rembrandt, Caravaggio, Louise Bourgeois, Balthus, and other modern artists, Mieke Bal again demonstrates her extraordinary flair for cultural criticism in taking on the work of Doris Salcedo, exploring the philosophical and aesthetic stakes of this committed political art and the relation between beauty, violence, and memory. A tour de force.

  Jonathan Culler

  Art, Memories, Philosophical

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