Quote image editor
“The most important of these things is that art challenges orthodoxy. To reject or vilify art because it does that is to fail to understand its nature. Art sets the artist’s passionate personal vision against the received ideas of its time. Art knows that received ideas are the enemies of art, as Flaubert told us in Bouvard and Pécuchet. Clichés are received ideas and so are ideologies, both those which depend on the sanction of invisible sky gods and those which do not. Without art, our ability to think, to see freshly, and to renew our world would wither and die.Art is not a luxury. It stands at the essence of our humanity, and it asks for no special protection except the right to exist.It accepts argument, criticism, even rejection. It does not accept violence.And in the end, it outlasts those who oppress it. The poet Ovid was exiled by Augustus Caesar, but the poetry of Ovid has outlasted the Roman Empire. The poet Mandelstam’s life was ruined by Joseph Stalin, but his poetry has outlasted the Soviet Union. The poet Lorca was murdered by the thugs of General Franco, but his art has outlasted the fascism of the Falange.” — Salman Rushdie