A Quote by Michael Craig-Martin

Sometimes we look at a work of art and we immediately think that it is German art, but with some we don't, it's not so obvious. — © Michael Craig-Martin
Sometimes we look at a work of art and we immediately think that it is German art, but with some we don't, it's not so obvious.
I think art is beautiful. It's decoration and adornment. But art is also a really important vessel for social change, and social change begins with thought. And so if you can find humor in something and take a moment to rethink it, you can take a step back and look at your values from a different angle. I think that's a really important way of carrying on with life. I think the best art for me is funny and the best comedy for me is art. Some of my favorite artists are comedians. Comedy is art, and art can be comedy, and the intersection is vital - at least for my own work.
I write some art criticism, and one thing that's clear to me is that politics is fashionable in the American art world in a way it maybe isn't in American fiction. Your work of art becomes fashionable the moment it has some kind of political commentary. I think this has its dangers - the equation between fashion, politics, and art is problematic for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, the notion of politics as being de rigueur in the world of fiction is almost unthinkable. In fiction in America at the moment, the escape into whimsy is far more prevalent than the political.
Though German art can never be Bavarian, but simply German, yet Munich is the capital of this German Art; here, under shelter of a Prince who kindles my enthusiasm, to feel myself a native and member of the people was, to me, the homeless wanderer, a deep, a genuine need.
Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.
I don't have the education of an art historian. I've certainly read about art and look at art and have educated myself to some extent. But I'm not a skilled or thorough art historian and I wouldn't call myself an art critic.
The only thing I collect is art. I collect it because I like looking at it. A lot of it is really personal stuff that my friends have made, paintings that my husband's mother made, and things that I bought. I buy abstract art on eBay, and I buy some outsider art on eBay, or what is called folk art, I buy a lot of. I have a lot of professional art work as well as more stuff my friends' kids make. To have a wall of art to look at, I feel really surrounded by love, because so much of the work is related to my friendships.
In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.
I think Twitter is the literature of the 21st century. I think it's an incredible art because when you make a book, you don't know who reads it. But every line, I write a million people, they read it, and then they insult me, they love me, they discuss, they give an opinion instantly, immediately. They are completely in communication, immediately. That is a real art.
And I do think that good art - the art that tends to last - is that art that hits human beings on several different levels at once because everybody's different. Some people approach art through their emotions, others through their head, and the art that can appeal to all of those levels is more likely to reach more people. Having more people see the work doesn't necessarily mean better art but it stands a better chance of lasting.
Art is nothing tangible. We cannot call a painting 'art' as the words 'artifact' and 'artificial' imply. The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made.
Some people don't think that what I do is art - but for me art exists by definition. The beautiful and most liberating thing about being an artist is the ability to say that what I make is art. Art exists because the author says so.
With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let's just call them bits of popular culture, whatever they are, sometimes very rarely by accident a movie becomes a work of art.
I don't think the audience goes and thinks of the movie as a piece of art - there are some independent people who may go and have a higher appreciation for filmmaking. It is a great art form, but I don't think you look at a painting and a movie with the same eye.
It is neither Art for Art, nor Art against Art. I am for Art, but for Art that has nothing to do with Art. Art has everything to do with life, but it has nothing to do with Art.
Although I do not care for the slogan "art for art's sake", there can be no question that what makes a work of fiction safe from larvae and rust is not its social importance but its art, only its art.
Art movements are always linked to some kind of turmoil. We can look at history and see that [political turmoil is] fertile ground for art. I also think that it gives artists something, a way of kind of processing. My friends and I have all been super motivated to work and to do the work that we need to and want to and think should be in the world. Hard times are really a fire under your ass to prioritize and think, "Okay, how can I challenge myself to put something in the world that wasn't there that can reach other folks and help them to process"?
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