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 is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. 'We the people' affect the making and quality of most of our culture, but not our art.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art's value and success are determined by the artist and their intention, not merely by the audience's consumption.
In this quote, Banksy emphasizes the idea that unlike commercial culture, which thrives on audience approval and market demand, art holds its value independently of public consumption. While millions engage with various forms of culture, true art is often driven by the artist's vision and creativity, rather than the direct influence of the audience's preferences or trends.
Themes
ArtCultureAudienceCreativitySuccess
In practice
Example use cases
During an art exhibition, a curator might quote Banksy to emphasize the independent nature of artistic expression.
More from Banksy
All quotes →T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.
BanksyRead
I originally set out to try and save the world, but now I'm not sure I like it enough.
BanksyRead
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?
BanksyRead
Think outside the box, collapse the box, and take a f**king sharp knife to it.
BanksyRead
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 don’t have their electricity and drinking water cut off randomly almost every day.
BanksyRead
Similar quotes
An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.
Friedrich NietzscheRead
What lives in art and is eternally living, is first of all the painter and then the painting.
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I feel like a lot of the fundamental material, I've assimilated. So now the question is: Am I going to really get into my spiritual inheritance of music and really develop my abilities?
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I love drag, and I love people who gravitate toward it. Because the people who do drag are people who dance to the beat of a different drummer.
RupaulRead
I've worked with the Los Angeles Zoo for 45 years, and we have this magnificent photographer, Tad Motoyama. He takes these wonderful, wonderful animal pictures. All through the years he's given me copies of these pictures. Well, I have all these gorgeous ones, so I said, 'Tad, I want to do a book with your picture on one side.'
Betty WhiteRead
The secret of it all, is to write in the gush, the throb, the flood, of the moment – to put things down without deliberation – without worrying about their style – without waiting for a fit time or place. I always worked that way. I took the first scrap of paper, the first doorstep, the first desk, and wrote – wrote, wrote…By writing at the instant the very heartbeat of life is caught.
Walt WhitmanRead