Top 40 Marilyn Minter Quotes

I really don’t own any jewelry. I paint it, but I’m not a consumer. I buy art – that’s all I want.

Only be an artist if you have no choice!

When Photoshop came around, I thought I’d died and went to heaven. When I hear artists say, ‘Oh, the good old days’ or ‘I’m old school,’ I just want to puke. There’s no tool I won’t use.

The fashion world tells me how much they love my work, but they don’t hire me very often. Tom Ford did, and he hated it. Naturally, he wanted to Photoshop away the imperfections, which is perfectly understandable. They want their vision.

In the late ’80s, I think my vision was chasing people out of the room. Nobody else thought like this. I was really this pro-sex feminist.

I’ve always worked from images that already exist in our culture, and I just tweak them – I photograph my vision/interpretation of things that already exist, and I take it to the extreme. And then I make paintings or videos.

I always say, ‘Perfection is the flaw. It doesn’t exist.’ I saw something somewhere about ‘porcelain pores’ – you’re not even allowed to have pores anymore!

I’m an animal-rights person, actually. Big time.

I don’t follow anybody. I just flip through whatever Instagram sends me. I like to keep my algorithm pure, so I only ever like pictures of art. It’s a rabbit hole for me because I’m a total voyeur.

I sort of feel like if you’re slightly marginalized, you’re hungrier, and you can take more risks and be more playful.

I’ve been playing hand-held video games since 1995. Its my way of training my brain.

Planned Parenthood is being mentioned by the Republican Party more than ISIS. I think Trump is insane. I don’t think you could have a normal conversation or even convince him. I think the ego is just about Trump. It’s not about the issues at all.

Any artist who sticks around in the public awareness for more than 20 years usually has something unique to say.

I like working with women who own their own power.

I think I might be hitting the zeitgeist. All around you, you’re looking at beautiful people that have been turned into robots. Maybe the eye is craving a little upper lip fur.

I work in a studio with lots of young people, most of whom are my former students. We delight in trading YouTube videos! We all stop working to watch them. I’m totally addicted to anything with kittens and puppies, but ‘Very Scared Kid’ is one of my favorites.

The thrill of a photo-realist painter is if you get really close to the painting, it looks just like a photograph. Whereas in my case, if you get close to my paintings, they totally fall apart – so I’m about as far from a photo-realist as it gets.

I am an illusionist. That’s why I create art.

My entire philosophy of teaching is based on the notion that when an artist finds a certain process really effortless, that’s probably what he or she should choose to do. So often, students take the opposite tack; they have no use for the skills that come easily to them.

I take things that already exist and just push them.

I think there’s still this huge glass ceiling for women owning sexuality. And especially young women. If you’re an old lady like me, I can do anything now.

I’m a voracious reader. I want information, all kinds – Internet, books, magazines.

I watched artists who blew up before me become parodies of themselves. I wasn’t listening to people when they told me that I had nothing to say, and I can’t listen to people now when they tell me I’m the bomb, even though I want to.

Art about art and backstory has taken over visual pleasure.

I love the idea of making images of the parts of the body that we all have but that no one pays attention to, like the soft area underneath your nose.

You know when women look their best? When they’re in love.

Success can be destructive to the creative process. I say it all the time: success is as dangerous as total failure.

My work is about the world I live in. So, I sort of make a picture of my life or our lives. I’m always looking for something that is overlooked, so I need to constantly be aware of what’s going on.

When I see an artist whose work I like at a party – I’m old now, so I can do this – I go right over and tell them how much I like their work. Instantly, I’m on their side. The act of saying it takes away the competition. The act of saying it makes me not hate them anymore, because they’re good.

I’m from the South; there’s been such progress since I was young, with racism, with feminism. The environment is next.

I’ve been supporting Planned Parenthood all my life. I’ve even used it myself, back when I had no money. It’s where I got my birth control. During college, every one of us got support from them.

People of my generation are used to collecting the heroic boys. And they’re used to paying a lot of money for heroic boys. I don’t make a third of what a guy would make.

The fashion world is 10,000 times more superficial than the art world. Fashion people are so much crazier than art-world people. They are constantly trying to leech from the art world, but they will never be able to do what we do.

I feed off the fashion world like a parasite.

Threads of Rosenquist and Warhol are all through my work. But I’m messier – and wetter. It’s the female perspective. I’m not as tidy, and they were both very tidy.

I meditate. Just counting my breath. Before I do anything, really.

I was there when they shut down the Pentagon; I’ve been going on protest marches my whole life… And now, this fight against controlling and policing women’s bodies feels like a war.

I’ve always tried to be very seductive. I want the paintings to draw you in. But I don’t want to just glamour you. I want to make an image of the time we live in and reflect it back.

I always knew I had something to say even when nobody else wanted to listen.

I really believe that women run the art world.