Pop art is
the American Dream, optimistic, generous, and naive! — Robert Indiana
Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable. — Leonard Baskin
Outside is the world; it's there. Pop Art looks out into the world. — Roy Lichtenstein
After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture. — Jeffrey Deitch
John Baldessari, the 79-year-old conceptualist, has spent more than four decades making laconic, ironic conceptual art-about-art, both good and bad. — Jerry Saltz
Because modernism has conquered art, kitsch is the savior of talent and devotion. — Odd Nerdrum
abstract art is not the creation of another reality but the true vision of reality. — Piet Mondrian
Art can make a difference because it pulls people up short. It says, don't accept things for their face value; you don't have to go along with any of this; you can think for yourself. — Jeanette Winterson
Art is the colors and textures of your imagination. — Meghan Trainor
Art is subject to arbitrary fashion. — Kary Mullis
Art makes people smile, brings people together. — Yusaku Maezawa
I've never really considered myself just a street artist. I consider myself a populist. — Shepard Fairey
...art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order. — Pablo Picasso
Art should be created for life, not for the museum — Jean Nouvel
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. — Jackson Pollock
Art's for art. Money's for pizza. — Tim McGraw
Art and music are the vehicle for the zeitgeist. — Hozier
The purpose of art is the fight for freedom. — Ai Weiwei
Art revolves around creating something that isn't there. — Kathleen Hanna
Art is all about doing what you shouldn't. — Nobuyoshi Araki
Art is supposed to spark conversation and make people think. — Nick Cannon
Sell the public flowers... things that they can hang on their walls without being uptight. — Robert Mapplethorpe
Art is the triumph over chaos. — John Cheever
You're a work of art. Not everyone will understand you, but the ones who do, will never forget about you.
Pop Art Artist Quotes
The pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second — comics, picnic tables, men’s trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles. All the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried not to notice at all. — Andy Warhol
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
I'm not a pop artist. For me pop never was.... Pop is concerned with exteriors. I'm concerned with interiors. When I use objects, I see them as a vocabulary of feelings. I can spend a lot of time with objects, and they leave me as satisfied as a good meal. I don't think pop artists feel that way. — Jim Dine
The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.
I think a great artist should be able to create any style, any form, anything from rock to pop to gospel to spiritual, just wonderful music where everybody can sing it. — Michael Jackson
I'm not a pop rapper. That's nothing against pop music - I love pop music. I've jumped on pop records for people and still will, but I'm not a pop artist. I didn't start from there. I started in underground music. I consider myself an underground artist, as well as a producer. — Juicy J
I don't listen to the contemporary pop artists. They all sound alike, anyway. — Patti LuPone
Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.
I like adding little elements into the final mix. I'm more fond of the '70s glam than '80s. I have that style of vocals... there are a lot of pop artists who are using the glam vibe in their music. I'm part of that wave. — Adam Lambert
When I started Dylan's Candy Bar in 2001, I wanted it to be a place that merged my love of pop culture, fashion, art and music with candy. Since then, we have been fortunate to pioneer artistic partnerships with many legends. — Dylan Lauren
Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. — Andy Warhol
I admire the abstract expressionists and pop artists so right now I'm referencing American '60s art and at the same time referencing Japanese manga culture. — Christian Marclay
Neckties satisfy modern man's desire to dress in art. — Harry Anderson
We dance for laughter, we dance for tears, we dance for madness, we dance for fears, we dance for hopes, we dance for screams, we are the dancers, we create the dreams. — Albert Einstein
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
It was not very easy for a woman to impose herself as a modern artist in Germany… Most of our male colleagues continued for a long time to look upon us as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status. — Hannah Hoch
I really like the city of Vienna. I like its art, its music and its architecture. In short, I like the culture that Vienna represents. What really captures me is the period around 1900 - the time of Freud, Schnitzler and Klimt. This is the period in which the modern view of mind was born. — Eric Kandel
Beauty or beast, the modern skyscraper is a major force with a strong magnetic field. It draws into its physical being all of the factors that propel and characterize modern civilization. The skyscraper is the point where art and the city meet. — Ada Louise Huxtable
Abstract Art Quotes
Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. — Jackson Pollock
The drawings don't start with 'a beautiful mark'. It has to be a mark of something out there in the world. It doesn't have to be an accurate drawing, but it has to stand for an observation, not something that is abstract, like an emotion. — William Kentridge
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was. — Jackson Pollock
Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential. — Wassily Kandinsky
There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. — Pablo Picasso
Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation. — Oliver Sacks
Why must art be static? You look at an abstraction, sculptured or painted, an entirely exciting arrangement of planes, spheres, nuclei, entirely without meaning. It would be perfect but it is always still. The next step in sculpture is motion. — Alexander Calder
The works of 'abstract' art are subtle creations of order out of simple contrasting elements. — Jan Tschichold
The buttocks are the most aesthetically pleasing part of the body because they are non-functional. Although they conceal an essential orifice, these pointless globes are as near as the human form can ever come to abstract art. — Kenneth Tynan
Avant Garde Art Quotes
If I paint like a barbarian, it's because we live in a barbarous age — Karel Appel
The main trouble with avant-garde art and literature, from the point of view of fascists and Stalinists, is not that they are too critical, but that they are too "innocent," that it is too difficult to inject effective propaganda, that kitsch is more pliable to this end. — Clement Greenberg
You might argue that the history of contemporary art is a series of avant-garde movements, each new wave outraging the last. — Michael Scott
Dance in this century has remained primarily a personal ritual operating, like most avant-garde art, as an idiosyncratic form rather than a tribal expression of religious powers or a corporate expression of societal values. — Jamake Highwater
I didn't set out to do something different so much as do something that interested me. I wasn't trying to be avant-garde - that's being fashionable. You don't set out to revolutionize art, you make statements for yourself. — Arnold Newman
I think that music is a very difficult art form in which to be avant-garde. When we sit down to listen to a piece of music, I think our implicit hope is that we're going to find it beautiful, or at least emotional, on some level. — Steven Soderbergh
In my home country, there was a little shop with old books, but it was really in the countryside. You couldn't find English books. I found this very avant-garde American art book that had information about Georgia O'Keeffe. I was very much impressed by her. — Yayoi Kusama
Experiment - exercising to see the result. We planned Europa not as an experiment in this sense but as a work of art. Yet The Eye and the Ear was done as a consciously designed experiment. Not every avant-garde dealt with experiments and not every experiment equalled avant-garde. — Stefan Themerson
Now, before you make a movie, you have to have a script, and before you have a script, you have to have a story; though some avant-garde directors have tried to dispense with the latter item, you'll find their work only at art theaters. — Arthur C. Clarke
Contemporary Art Quotes
If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time? — Melvin Glover
My work seen in its totality is a statement about the integration of the contemporary artist into an industrial society. — Herbert Bayer
The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls. — Maya Deren
Graffiti writers will never stop. They'll just evolve. It's interesting what ideas people come up with and how it all extends forward. — Ben Eine
For me it's very important to turn Kiev into one of the main centers of contemporary art in the world. There is New York. There's London. And there will be Kiev. Everyone will come and say, 'Wow! — Victor Pinchuk
A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with. — Banksy
I especially like to collect contemporary art. — Yusaku Maezawa
I began collecting artwork as a way to help young artists to promote their work as well as to increase awareness of contemporary art among the younger generation. — Yusaku Maezawa
I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity. — Cindy Sherman
New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. — Sol LeWitt
Abstract Painting Quotes
Abstract is not a style. I simply want to make a surface work. This is just a use of space and form: it's an ambivalence of forms and space. — Joan Mitchell
I want people to know what it is they're looking at. But at the same time, the closer they get to the painting, it's like going back into childhood. And it's like an abstract piece.. it becomes the landscape of the brush marks rather than just sort of an intellectual landscape. — Jenny Saville
I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about so-called avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known at this time. — Henry Flynt
I was worried in the '80s that the best abstract painting had become obsessed with materiality, and painterly gestures and materiality were up against the wall. — Frank Stella
We speak of concrete and not abstract painting because nothing is more concrete, more real than a line, a color, a surface. — Theo van Doesburg
I'm not interested in 'abstracting' or taking things out or reducing painting to design, form, line, and color. I paint this way because I can keep putting more things in it - drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space. Through your eyes it again becomes an emotion or idea. — Willem de Kooning
The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on! — LeRoy Neiman
I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. — Jackson Pollock
I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman. — Jean-Michel Basquiat
What I mean by 'abstract' is something which comes to life spontaneously through a gamut of contrasts, plastic at the same time as psychic, and pervades both the picture and the eye of the spectator with conceptions of new and unfamiliar elements. — Marc Chagall
Visual Art Quotes
The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design. — Massimo Vignelli
Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language. — Steven Pinker
I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary. — Barbara Kruger
The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age. — Marshall McLuhan
Our one goal is to give the world a taste of peace, friendship and understanding. Through the visual arts, the art of celebration of life. — Steven Spielberg
In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. — Walt Disney
I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality...to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not? — Storm Thorgerson
The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years. — Jerry Saltz
Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves. — Julia Morgan
Don't be afraid of expressing what you really mean in your art, what you really feel. Say it visually, as strongly as you can. Push as far a reach as you can, then go all the way! — Kay WalkingStick
Pop Culture Quotes
First and foremost, I'm a journalist. My business is the truth. Now, I happen to be other things, too - a pop-culture phenomenon, the most in-demand speaker on the campus lecture circuit, whatever. — Milo Yiannopoulos
Twentieth-century culture's disease is the inability to feel their reality. People cluster to TV, soap operas, movies, theater, pop idols and they have wild emotion over symbols. But in the reality of their own lives, they're emotionally dead. — Jim Morrison
Pop culture used to be like LSD – different, eye-opening and reasonably dangerous. It’s now like crack – isolating, wasteful and with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. — Peter Saville
I love Bane. I love the Joker. I love Batman. — Jake Paul
Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. — Christopher Nolan
Pop culture is a reflection of social change, not a cause of social change. — John Podhoretz
Everything I know about pop culture I know from 'The Simpsons,' and they say the Grammys aren't very good. — Jonny Greenwood
Remember, we're madly in love, so it's all right to kiss me anytime you feel like it. — Suzanne Collins
Yeah, I don't deal with current events or pop culture, and I avoid politics like the plague. — Max Cannon
Wall Art Quotes
People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly. — Banksy
Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint. — Banksy
Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. — Banksy
Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place. — Banksy
In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it. — Michelangelo
You can create the perfect triceps by just pushing yourself off your wall. — Jean-Claude Van Damme
There are four basic human needs; food, sleep, sex and revenge. — Banksy
A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves. — Banksy
The Art Snob can be recognized in the home by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls, quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. This is followed either by complete and pained silence or a comment such as 'That's really a very pleasant little water color you have there. — Russell Lynes
Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else. — Banksy
Pop Music Quotes
Straight from the heart, I represent hip hop
I be three albums deep, but I don't wanna go pop
Too many candy rappers seem to be at the top
Too much candy is no good, so now I'm closing the shop. — Phife Dawg
Pop music, disco music, and heavy metal music is about shutting out the tensions of life, putting it away. — Peter Tork
Latin music has many international influences - pop, rock, country, Brazilian sounds, and alternative styles. — Ednita Nazario
Rock and roll by its nature is sexual. So girls playing rock and roll is saying to the world, "We own our sexuality." I think that pop music is sort of about "you can do what you want to me" kind of energy, while rock and roll is "I'm going to do what I want to you" kind of energy. — Joan Jett
My favorite type of music to sing is a crossover between country and pop. — Lauren Alaina
Pop changes week to week, month to month. But great music is like literature. — Ravi Shankar
That's the beautiful thing about the saxophone. It can peacefully coexist with just about anything - whether it's hip-hop, rap, rock music, pop, R&B or jazz, there's a place for the saxophone in all of those styles. — Dave Koz
Spin Me Round was number one all over the world, everywhere. It changed the face of pop music, no question. We took technology further than Trevor Horn. — Pete Waterman
In pop music, you say, 'You can do what you want to me.' Rock 'n' roll says, 'I'm gonna do what I want to you.' — Joan Jett
The first music I bought when I was nine or 10 was pop music from the '50s and '60s, like The Everly Bros., Elvis, Del Shannon, The Flamingos, The Platters, whatever I could get my hands on. And then some musical things, like Camelot, Singing in the Rain and Hair. — Will Oldham
Fashion wasn't what you wore someplace anymore; it was the whole reason for going. — Andy Warhol
When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them. — Andy Warhol
Pop Art is industrial painting. I think the meaning of my work is that it is industrial, it's what all the world will soon become. Europe will be the same way, soon, it won't be American; it will be universal. — Roy Lichtenstein
Don't worry about mistakes. Making things out of mistakes, that's creativity. — Peter Max
People should fall in love with their eyes closed. — Andy Warhol
The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting — Andy Warhol
When you stop wanting something, you get it. — Andy Warhol
I’m really afraid to feel happy because it never lasts — Andy Warhol
We, as pop stars, are people not androids. We’ve got views. I’ve got opinions and I don’t see why I shouldn’t use a bit of my art to put them over. I think music is one of the most powerful media forces in the world today. — Roger Meddows Taylor
It is the transcendent (or 'abstract' or 'self-contained') nature of music that the new so called concretism--Pop Art, eighteen-hour slices-of-reality films, musique concrete--opposes. But instead of bringing art and reality closer together, the new movement merely thins out the distinction. — Igor Stravinsky
Mine was not pop art. I maybe started with a subject, but I changed the subject. — Claes Oldenburg
There are many more important things in life than fashion. But fashion, to me, is part of pop culture. And I'm an art collector. I'm obsessed with art and pop culture. And I say that there is fame, fashion, art, music and entertainment, including celebrity, that really moves the needle in society. — Tommy Hilfiger
Send anyone claiming that their RPG activity is an art form my way, and I'll gladly stick a pin in their head and deflate it just to have the satisfaction of the popping sound that makes. One might play a game artfully, but that makes neither the game nor its play art. — Gary Gygax
I wonder if it's possible to have a love affair that lasts forever. — Andy Warhol
I like cinematic art that doesn't have to include violence as the main meat of emotion. Now, excellence in cinema is based on murder, guns. Tarantino bores me. Even though he is very appealing and very facile about putting elements of pop culture into his work. But it kinds of dates it, right? — Jeff Buckley
Most people don't realize the many steps that a pop-up goes through. There are a variety of "Dummies" (the sketch phase of the book). Then finally the pencil "dummy", then the finished art which is like painting pieces of a jig saw puzzle. — Tomie dePaola
Pop art is about liking things. — Andy Warhol
As far as I'm concerned, there is no line between high art and pop art, and there should be no line. — Wayne White
Maybe we didn't even have a chance. The message of American Pop Art was so powerful and so optimistic. But it was also very limited, and that led us to believe that we could somehow distance ourselves from it and communicate a different intention. — Gerhard Richter
I never read, I just look at pictures. — Andy Warhol
Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art — Andy Warhol
Reality is what you can get away with. — Robert Anton Wilson
Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn. — Don Delillo
I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.' — Lady Gaga
I then discovered the Pop Art of Warhol, Lichtenstein, and Peter Max. I was inspired that these fun and colourful images could be presented seriously on canvas. — Joe Average
Pop Art is not painting because painting must have content and emotion. — Grace Hartigan
In England, pop art and fine art stand resolutely back to back. — Colin MacInnes
You see Michelangelo and Picasso and you read literature. I had some innate inchoate yearning for that, but I never really saw where I would fit in. That's called art. And then something happened to pop music, which is that it became art under the hand of the Beatles, the Stones, and Bob Dylan and some other people. — David Chase
How can you say one style is better than another? You ought to be able to be an Abstract Expressionist next week, or a Pop artist, or a realist, without feeling you've given up something.. I think that would be so great, to be able to change styles. And I think that's what's is going to happen, that's going to be the whole new scene. — Andy Warhol
I feel that the music that I do is somewhat of a lost art and it's not as popular as dance or pop music and people are not as interested in it. But it's something that I believe in and I feel that it's needed, so that's why I do it and I will keep doing it until everybody hears it and gets it. — Jazmine Sullivan
I am interested in Icons, not just religious works but also contemporary icons. I also like the way the Pop movement of the 60s took subjects from consumer products and people - soup cans, comic books, film stars - and elevated them through art, just like in traditional iconography. — Horace Panter
In Conclusion
Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of pop art quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about pop art to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of pop art quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.
