"Most societies are ruled by mediocre people that have no vision and no imagination. Most rulers are scared of creation and creative people. Artists are funny people. All they want is to touch and move, challenge and surprise others. But dictators hate surprises more than anything else. All they want is to turn their territory into a neat little toy prison camp and play with their little toy people. Push them around, rip a leg or a head off now and then or throw them into the garbage when they are tired of their stupid, little doll faces."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Painters from AustriaConceptual artistsInstallation artistsMultimedia artistsPhotographers from Ireland
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Interview by Michal Szyksznian, celebritarian.pl, 2009
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Gottfried_Helnwein
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Gottfried Helnwein
österreichisch-irischer Künstler
28 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Gottfried Helnwein →
Related Quotes
"If anyone from Austrian fine art of the last fifty years could be called a star, then there is only one person who me…"
"Helnwein has always said that he paints children because they symbolize humanity better than adults. This may be so, …"
"Art is a weapon for me, with which I can strike back."
"Of all his paintings, the most disturbing is Epiphany (1996), for which he dips into our collective memory of Christi…"
"In retrospect I would say from Donald Duck I have learned more about life than from all the schools I ever attended."
"Opening my first Donald Duck comic book felt like seeing the daylight again for someone who had been trapped undergro…"
"When I started to paint, I painted children because I just felt that I wanted to take their side. What always upset m…"
"My question always was: why do people always cause so much pain to other people? Why does everybody look so hurt? Whe…"
"Imaginations and illusions are always so much more powerful and bigger than this mediocre and boring thing called rea…"
"When I look at a work of Art I ask myself: does it inspire me, does it touch and move me, do I learn something from i…"