Art is this intense form of individualism that makes the public try to exercise over it an authority that is as immoral as it is ridiculous, and as corrupting as it is contemptible. It is not quite their fault. The public have always, and in every age, been badly brought up. They are continually asking Art to be popular, to please their want of taste, to flatter their absurd vanity, to tell them what they have been told before, to show them what they ought to be tired of seeing, to amuse them when they feel heavy after eating too much, and to distract their thoughts when they are wearied of their own stupidity. Now Art should never try to be popular. The public should try to make itself artistic.

Critics should never socialize with artists; it’s difficult enough to like their work in the first place.

The beauty other people create is not for the artists. Artists have to live alone.

Artists should not look to the left or the right. Art should be strong and nonconformist—and most importantly, art should always be personal.

No one wants my painting because it is different from other people's — peculiar, crazy public that demands the greatest possible degree of originality on the painter's part and yet won't accept him unless his work resembles that of the others!

Art should never be a slave to commerce, but for all working artists that's exactly what it must be.

Art should be artless, not heartless.

No artist tolerates reality.

I certainly didn't write it to be popular.

Art doesn't typically get made by happy people.

To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public.

The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.

Society is basically not interested in art. Art has a purpose of its own.

No real painter ever wants be known through any other medium than his painting.