A standard line, promoted by people like Clement Greenberg,.. is that politics contaminates art, and Manet is often cited as an example of art for art's sake.

Whenever the medium of photography is useful for a particular task, I use it. If another medium is more suitable I use that.

Artists and art institutions have to learn how to play hardball. A democratic society needs a democratic art and we have a right to demand it.

When works of art are presented like rare butterflies on the walls, they're decontextualized. We admire their beauty, and I have nothing against that, per se. But there is more to art than that.

Museums are not normally presenting the works on the walls as provocations to work. It's more like going to a Jacuzzi.

Trivializing the Holocaust is the last thing I want to do.

A liberal public is interesting to have as an audience. It is for that very reason that corporations make such an effort to ally themselves with cultural institutions.