If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.
BanksyRead
Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.
Interpretation
Art serves to provide solace to those in distress while challenging those who are complacent.
This quote by Banksy emphasizes the dual role of art in society. It suggests that art is a powerful tool that can bring comfort to those who are suffering or marginalized, while simultaneously provoking thought and discomfort in those who are comfortable and may not recognize the struggles of others. This reflects the potential of art to inspire change and raise awareness about social issues.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a discussion on the impact of art in social movements at a gallery opening.
If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.
T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.
I originally set out to try and save the world, but now I'm not sure I like it enough.
Graffiti ultimately wins out over proper art because it becomes part of your city, it' s a tool; "I'll meet you in that pub, you know, the one opposite that wall with a picture of a monkey holding a chainsaw". I mean, how much more useful can a painting be than that?
Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a f**king sharp knife to it.
Gaza is often described as 'the world's largest open air prison' because no-one is allowed to enter or leave. But that seems a bit unfair to prisons - they donβt have their electricity and drinking water cut off randomly almost every day.
Fiction is not imagination. It is what anticipates imagination by giving it the form of reality. This is quite opposite to our own natural tendency which is to anticipate reality by imagining it, or to flee from it by idealizing it. That is why we [Europeans] shall never inhabit true fiction; we are condemned to the imaginary and nostalgia for the future.
A good bookshop is just a genteel Black Hole that knows how to read.
There are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.
Sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.
I do a lot of curiosity buying; I buy it if I like the album cover, I buy it if I like the name of the band, anything that sparks my imagination.
It's certainly true that when I was young, writing seemed to me so important that I would have sacrificed almost anything to it ... Because I thought of the world in which I wrote -- the world I created -- as somehow much more enormously alive than the world I was actually living in.
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