Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" Artists have been very good at working for the church and for the state; communicating the aspirations of a society. "

Related Quotes:

" Questlove is an artist who I respect because he constantly shifts within the idiom, challenging perceptions of hip-hop and black American culture. "

" Once I get a project in my head, I start getting really obsessive about it. "

" Artists should be able to thrive and allow their ideas to flourish as much as those in biotechnology or finance. "

" I grew up in this weird, educationally elite but economically impoverished environment. Total 'Oprah' story. "

" Europe has been a place of refuge. Why should it stop with black and brown bodies? "

" The whole conversation of my work has to do with power and who has it. "

" Obama stands as a signal that this nation will continue to redefine what it means to push beyond the borders of what's possible. "

" I do think that fist-waving conversations around liberation ideologies are sort of dated - I'm not creating Barbara Kruger moments of self-actualization - what I'm trying to do is create more moments of chaos where we don't really know where we are: to destabilize; where all the rules are suspended temporarily. "

" The way we think about a presidential portrait is one that is imbued with dignity from the outset. "

" There's something really cool about taking oily coloured paste and pushing it around with these hairy sticks and making something that looks like you. That's the magic of painting. "

" What you have in my work is one person's path as he travels through the world, and there is no limitation of what is conceivable. "

" For years, I've been painting black men as a way to respond to the reality of the streets. I've asked black men to show up in my studio in the clothes that they want to be wearing. And often times, those clothes would be the same trappings people would see on television and find menacing. "

" We all look at the same object in different ways. "

" I think it would be really interesting to paint Obama. "

" When I thought about the absolute favourite of favourites or what stood for the best of haute couture, it was Givenchy. "

" In America , there's a just-add-water reality TV world in which people expect to get their Warholian 15 minutes of fame. "

" The erotic and the art historical imagination is something that gets very little play when people talk about my work, and when they rarely do, they try to problematize it. "

" I thought I'd be a chef by night and paint by day. Now I just have fabulous dinner parties. "

" The beauty of art is that it allows you to slow down, and for a moment, things that once seemed unfamiliar become precious to you. "

" The language of the heroic is something that has evolved over time. "

" What's interesting about the 21st century is how people deal with cultural history. We don't necessarily feel like there are discrete categories. We consume it as a complete package, whether it's down the street or on the other side of the globe. "

" I know how young black men are seen. They're boys - scared little boys, oftentimes. I was one of them. I was completely afraid of the Los Angeles Police Department. "

" My interest is in completing an image that is spectacular beyond belief. My fidelity is to the image and the art and not to the bragging rights of making every stroke on every flower. I'm realistic. "

" It's sad, the enslavement of the black underclass to designer labels - we're an age that cares more about Versace than Vermeer. "

" If people looked at me like I was a little different, I would maybe sit next to them, and I would draw. "

" I rarely meet a lot of the people who buy and collect my work. "

" My work is a contemporary call to arms. It is time to get our mojo back. To rediscover our true north. "

" I have a fondness for making paintings that go beyond just having a conversation about art for art's sake or having a conversation about art history. I actually really enjoy looking at broader popular culture. "

" My mother introduced to me as a child the world of language: the way in which translation can be a system by which you can understand others. "

" I understand blackness from the inside out. What my goal is, is to allow the world to see the humanity that I know personally to be the truth. "