Words matter. These are the best JR Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
The city’s the best gallery I could imagine. I would never have to make a book and then present it to a gallery and let them decide if my work was nice enough to show it to people. I would control it directly with the public in the streets.
The fact that I stay anonymous means I can exhibit wherever I want. No one knows my name, so it’s easy for me to travel.
A really important point for me is that I don’t use any brand or corporate sponsors. So I have no responsibility to anyone but myself and the subjects.
Can art change the world? Maybe… we should change the question: Can art change people’s lives?
If there’s one thing I’ve always taken care of with my work, it’s that it’s never an advertisement for anything other than the work itself and for the people it’s about – no ‘Coca-Cola presents.’
Art is not meant to change the world, but when you see people interacting, when you see an impact on their lives, then I guess in a smaller way, this is changing the world. So, that’s what I believe in. That’s why I’m into creating more and more interactions.
I’ve always been so surprised by how people interpret my photos in context.
When I was little, I didn’t really travel – from the suburbs to Paris was already a journey. I had a foreigner’s eye on the city, and I still enjoy that point of view. Then there’s the fact that one of the things that touches me most is injustice.
The Internet doesn’t always play a great role for art, especially art in the street, as people take what they see for the final image of it. But the most interesting thing about street art is to see it for real, to understand what it means and where it’s displayed.
What I love about the TED is that it’s not, ‘Hey, take this check and enjoy.’ It’s, ‘Do something with this, and we’ll help you.’ I think that’s the most beautiful prize I’ve ever heard of.
With ‘Inside Out,’ no matter how good the photo or how big the pasting, people will like it or they won’t. But what you see through any of these actions is that there’s going to be discussion and it’s going to bring people together.
If you give me Times Square, I want to give it back to the people.
Art is not supposed to change the world, to change practical things, but to change perceptions. Art can change the way we see the world. Art can create an analogy.
Even when I do really big pieces, I do them strips by strips – so you have to paste, you have to involve people. It’s a whole process. And I like that. For me, that’s where the artwork is.
I want to create the largest-ever participatory art project and highlight the concept of Shadow Philanthropy, where people help others create work without taking credit for it – through this we can really change the world.
