Is bashing famous artists a way to show off your own wit & genius, implying how much you are above them, or merely a display of a lack of style or is it neither?
Are witty insults the same as honesty? What are your thoughts?
Here are a few examples of historical “artistic” insults:
Frida Kahlo on the European Surrealists:
“They are so damn ‘intellectual’ and rotten that I can’t stand them anymore… I’d rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than have anything to do with those ‘artistic’ bitches of Paris.”
Marc Chagall on Pablo Picasso:
“What a genius, that Picasso… It’s a pity he doesn’t paint.”
Pierre-Auguste Renoir on Leonardo da Vinci:
“He bores me. He ought to have stuck to his flying machines.”
Francis Bacon on Jackson Pollock:
“Jackson Pollock’s paintings might be very pretty but they’re just decoration. I always think they look like old lace.”
Andy Warhol on Jasper Johns:
“Oh, I think he’s great. He makes such great lunches.”
Michelangelo on Raphael:
“Everything he knew, he learned from me.”
Salvador Dalí on Jackson Pollock’s style:
“…The indigestion that goes with fish soup…”
Claude Monet on the French Realists:
“Poor blind idiots! They want to see everything clearly, even through fog!”
Salvador Dalí on Piet Mondrian:
“Completely idiotic critics have for several years used the name of Piet Mondrian as though he represented the sum mum of all spiritual activity. They quote him in every connection. Piet for architecture, Piet for poetry, Piet for mysticism, Piet for philosophy, Piet’s whites, Piet’s yellows, Piet, Piet, Piet… Well, I Salvador, will tell you this, that Piet with one ‘i’ less would have been nothing but pet, which is the French word for fart.”
Sources: Quotes via Flavorwire.com