About This Quote

I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary. I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips, and is heavy and coarse and blunt and sweet and stupid as life itself. This quote is by the artist Marcel Duchamp, who said this in response to a journalist’s question about his concept of art. He was saying that he wanted to work with something ordinary that was not beautiful but was still beautiful because it was ordinary.

Some Similar Quotes

1. Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something. - Rainbow Rowell

---

2. It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done. - Vincent Van Gogh

---

3. Any fool can be happy. It takes a man with real heart to make beauty out of the stuff that makes us weep. - Clive Barker

---

4. Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you. - Chuck Klosterman

---

5. There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people. - Vincent Van Gogh

---

More Quotes By Claes Oldenburg

1. I am for an art that imitates the human, that is comic, if necessary, or violent, or whatever is necessary. I am for an art that takes its form from the lines of life itself, that twists and extends and accumulates and spits and drips,...

---

2. I am for an art that is political-erotical-mystical, that does something more than sit on its ass in a museum.

---

3. 'Clothespin' was the first city monument on a large scale that could compete with the architecture around it.

---