Quotes & Sayings About Disturbing Art

Rome is the city above all cities which loses most of its meaning to those who do not bring to it some historical sense, a decent knowledge of art, and a good amount of time. Rome therefore is particularly disturbing to an American. — Clare Boothe Luce

If climate change drove the megafauna extinct, then this presents yet another reason to worry about what we are doing to global temperatures. If, on the other hand, people were to blame - and it seems increasingly likely that they were - then the import is almost more disturbing. It would mean that the current extinction event began all the way back in the middle of the last ice age. It would mean that man was a killer - to use the term of art an "overkiller" - pretty much right from the start. — Elizabeth Kolbert

I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle ... In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect. — Henry Moore

A work of art does not need an explanation. The work has to speak for itself. The work may be subject to many interpretations, but only one was in the mind of the artist. Some artists say to make the work readable for the public is an artist's responsibility, but I don't agree with that. The only responsibility to be absolutely truthful to the self. My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing. — Louise Bourgeois

All art needs to be funny, sad and a little disturbing simultaneously or else it's not art. — Ezekiel Tyrus

Great art is not a matter of presenting one side or another, but presenting a picture so full of the contradictions, tragedies, [and] insights of the period that the impact is at once disturbing and satisfying. — Pauli Murray

You keep walking through the middle of J.C.," I said. "It's very disturbing for him; he hates being reminded he's a hallucination." "I'm not a hallucination," J.C. snapped. "I have state-of-the-art stealthing equipment. — Brandon Sanderson

What I want is an art of equilibrium, of purity and tranquility, free from unsettling or disturbing subjects, so that all those who work with their brains, and this includes business men as well as artists and writers, will look on it as something soothing, a kind of cerebral sedative as relaxing in its way as a comfortable armchair. — Henri

When we do it, it is for art. When they [animals] do it, it is for competition. Both may be true. What is disturbing and irrational is the decision to explain human behavior in spiritual terms of a sense of beauty, and animal behavior in mechanistic terms of demonstrating fitness. The object, yet again, seems to be to define humans as higher and unique. — Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

It's the sketch Edward did of me before he went away, the one he said was fine but didn't want to keep. It's as if he's drawn me not once but twice. In the main drawing I have my head turned to the right. It's so detailed, you can see the tautness of my neck muscles and the arch of my clavicle. But underneath or over that there's a second drawing, barely more than a few jagged, suggestive lines, done with a surprising energy and violence: my head turned the other way, my mouth open in a kind of snarl. The two heads pointing in opposite directions give the drawing a disturbing sense of movement.

Which one's the pentimento, and which the finished thing? And why did Edward say there was nothing wrong with it? Did he not want me to see this double image for some reason? — J.P. Delaney

As an artist, even if you are putting out something really dark and disturbing, that's good because it's opening a discussion. Always in the back of my mind is this thought that the world has to be a better place with you in it. — Shaun Tan

Art is individualism, and individualism is a disturbing and disintegrating force. — Oscar Wilde

From the classically executed lifelike bouquets, tempting you to reach for the petals that fell on a three-dimensional tablecloth, to a new and disturbing style in which the colors seemed to blaze with such intensity they destroyed the old lines, the old solidity, to make a vision like those states which I'm nearest my delirium and flowers grow before my eyes and crackle like the flames of lamps. — Anne Rice

This is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies and no deceptions. One can detect here, elevated to an incomparably higher level, the same pathetic emotional appeal that lies concealed in every fake spiritualist photograph, every pornographic photograph; one comes to suspect that the strange, disturbing emotional appeal of the photographic art consists solely in that same repeated refrain: this is a true ghost ... this is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies, no deceptions. — Yukio Mishima

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time. — Edward Albee