Avant Garde Artist Quotes & Sayings

I am not the avant-garde. I am the artist who comes after the advancing guard. I am more concerned with continuity of ideas and tradition than in inventing a unique imagery. — Nathan Oliveira

We each took a fierce delight in introducing the other to some new idea or development, the next amazing artist or record album, always hustling to out-avant the other's garde. — Tom Robbins

Publishing has gone very middlebrow. It's turned its back on legacy of modernism and gone into a humanist mode. When people go through art school they are exposed to the history of the avant-garde, and there's a general understanding that what you're doing as an artist is to a large extent, not just regurgitating that history, but engaging with it. There's this denial of that in the mainstream publishing world. — Tommy McCarthy

Israel is a wonderful place to be an artist - a place where imagination flourishes. Israeli culture is refreshingly avant garde - making films, music, performance art and visual art that continues to push the envelope, inspire and empower. — Ryan Kavanaugh

It's interesting how people who were once fairly radical can become, later in life, kind of conservative, and not just in terms of politics - how, if you're an artist, you can start out being somewhat avant-garde and then end up doing landscapes. — Richard Prince

No genuinely avant-garde artist should ever be on the government dole. — Camille Paglia

The avant-garde poet or artist tries in effect to imitate God by creating something valid solely on its own terms. — Clement Greenberg

Yes, I am Aboriginal but I have the right to be avant-garde like any white artist. — Tracey Moffatt

I suppose I could try to be some avant-garde artist if I wanted to, but that doesn't interest me as much. — Steven Soderbergh

Life is like Avant Garde. It will make you uncomfortable, and leave the room. But always remember to come back and watch the artist bow. — Valerie Cruz

I've always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That's what I've always done. — Jeff Koons