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Quotes by Brad Holland

A lot of artists say they'd be happy in a classless society. But artists are often the first to deceive themselves. Put them in the kind of utopia they sentimentalize, and in no time, they would be binding their feet, lengthening their necks or flattening their heads, just to be different.
– Brad Holland
Art imitates life. Life imitates high school.
– Brad Holland
Back in the prehistoric jungle, all the animals who trusted other animals got eaten. The only ones who survived to reproduce were the ones who instinctively feared everybody and bit their heads off. This explains why so many people, like artists, who trust their instincts, behave like crocodiles.
– Brad Holland
Cubism is still the most important art movement for the same reason that John D. is still the most important Rockefeller.
– Brad Holland
Fifty years ago, it was the dream of every bohemian artist to be seen getting out of a limousine wearing blue jeans and sneakers. Today, it's the dream of probably half the people in the country.
– Brad Holland
Futurism: This was a movement of intellectuals who wanted to replace tradition with the modern world of machinery, speed, violence, and public relations. It proves that we should be careful what intellectuals wish for, because we might get it.
– Brad Holland
I distrust anyone with a slash in their job description. I've met too many actor/waiters and too many rock musician/electricians.
– Brad Holland
I think that graffiti artists should go to the homes of their patrons with spray cans and make their condos look like subway cars. This would separate serious lovers of graffiti from uptowners spelunking for art thrills.
– Brad Holland
I've never understood why artists, who so often condescend to the cliches of their own culture, are so eager to embrace the cliches of cultures they know nothing about.
– Brad Holland
If they were starting their careers today, Rockwell and Picasso would probably both be painting on black velvet.
– Brad Holland
In America, the only truly popular art form is the movies. Most people consider painting a hobby and literature, schoolwork.
– Brad Holland
In Modernism, reality used to validate media. In Postmodernism, the media validate reality. If you don't believe this, just think how many times you've described some real event as being 'just like a movie.'
– Brad Holland
In the next century, when art will be packaged as virtual reality software, realistic paintings will sell the way Shaker furniture does now. Shaker furniture will sell the way Van Gogh paintings do. And teddy bears owned by Elvis will come to auction only occasionally.
– Brad Holland
In the nineteenth century the camera made a realist of the man on the street. Now the computer can make anybody a desktop Cubist. Technology may or may not be destiny, but I doubt that machines will replace art any more than wheels have replaced feet.
– Brad Holland
It is every artist's fantasy to run things. I know personally, I'd be happiest as dictator of a small island. The problem is that romantic artists are usually too disorganized to run their own lives, let alone societies. And most societies are too sensible to let them try it.
– Brad Holland
It's my guess that those cutting-edge artists who attack tradition secretly believe tradition will survive to enshrine them as the wild and crazy geniuses who destroyed it.
– Brad Holland
Many of the contradictions in Postmodern art come from the fact that we're trying to be artists in a democratic society. This is because in a democracy, the ideal is compromise. In art, it isn't.
– Brad Holland
Many people have observed that truth is stranger than fiction. This has led some intellectuals to conclude that it's stranger than non-fiction as well.
– Brad Holland
New Art follows Old Art. Comes before New Improved Art.
– Brad Holland
Political art expresses the cliches you agree with, unlike propaganda, which expresses the cliches you don't.
– Brad Holland
Postmodernists believe that truth is myth, and myth, truth. This equation has its roots in pop psychology. The same people also believe that emotions are a form of reality. There used to be another name for this state of mind. It used to be called psychosis.
– Brad Holland
Since multinational giants couldn't have little pictures of red barns or weeping clowns in the lobbies of their Bauhaus buildings, Abstract Expressionism emerged as the world's most overrated form of interior decoration.
– Brad Holland
Style is the most valuable asset of the modern artist. That's probably why so many styles are reported lost or stolen each year.
– Brad Holland
Surrealism: An archaic term. Formerly an art movement. No longer distinguishable from everyday life.
– Brad Holland
The only people left in America who seem not to be artists are illustrators.
– Brad Holland
The truth is, we haven't really figured out yet how artists are going to thrive in modern mass societies. We're all experiments.
– Brad Holland