A Quote by Robert Crumb

The fine-art world knows very little about the cartoon world. — © Robert Crumb
The fine-art world knows very little about the cartoon world.
A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight. Socrates was one of these rare people. He knew that he knew nothing about life and about the world. And now comes the important part: it troubled him that he knew so little.
All of my movies are about how I wish the world would work. I've made very few movies about how the world worked. I could name them on one and a half hands, about how my movies have been very reflective of how the world was exactly. A lot of my movies are really about the way I wish the world was, and that's what this whole art form is all about. It's an interpretive art form.
Fine-art photography is a very small world associated with galleries, museums, and university art programs. It's not like rock music; the products of this world have never been widely seen because the artists are often exploring things that are not already coded in general consciousness. It's not that photographers don't want to be famous, it's just that very few of the views from the edges of culture make the mainstream. Ansel Adams was an exception.
For too long the world has failed to recognise that the Olympic Games and the Olympic Movement are about fine athletics and fine art.
So, the world is fine. We don’t have to save the world—the world is big enough to look after itself. What we have to be concerned about, is whether or not the world we live in, will be capable of sustaining us in it. That’s what we need to think about.
I take pleasure in working with the non-art photographs that reside in public archives, essentially authorless and owned by the world itself, because I find the world of fine art photography to be pretty silly and pretentious.
The cartoon me writes the books cartoon people read in the cartoon world, because they need things to read there too.
I don't know why we, in the art world, cannot unpack things and sort of make hybrid notions of a practice. We're very rigid. It's funny, though; in music, we have no problem sampling, mixing and remixing. But in the art world, why can't we take little parts of history and mix it together?
But art is not simply works of art; it is the spirit that knows Beauty, that has music in its soul and the color of sunsets in its headkerchiefs; that can dance on a flaming world and make the world dance, too.
I don't know very many people in the art world, only socialise with the few I like, and have little time to gnaw my nails with anxiety about any criticism I hear about.
Fine art, that exists for itself alone, is art in a final state of impotence. If nobody, including the artist, acknowledges art as a means of knowing the world, then art is relegated to a kind of rumpus room of the mind and the irresponsibility of the artist and the irrelevance of art to actual living becomes part and parcel of the practice of art.
There is a small world of people who are very interested in contemporary art and a slightly bigger world of people who look at contemporary art. But then there is a much larger world that doesn't realise how influential art is on things that they actually look at.
Art history is fine. I mean, that's a discipline. Art history is art history, and you start from the beginning and you end up in artist in time. But art is a little bit different. Art is a conversation. And if there's no conversation, what the hell is it about?
The art world is a bit smaller than the music world, and the music world is a bit smaller than the cinema world. But the art world is pretty tight even though the biggest thing that's happened to it is the auctions, which are the only reason people on the outside know anything about it.
A mistake I've made is I have not worried sufficiently about the art world, really. I have not concerned myself with the other people in the art world. I've been a little too singular, and that's a mistake I've made. But everybody makes a mistake of some kind, and if that's my only mistake, I'm happy.
We seldom repent of speaking little, very often of speaking too much: a vulgar and trite maxim, which all the world knows and, but which all the world does not practice
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