“The Chinese authorities think of artists as prostitutes. And in reality it’s true: in the Communist system artists just represent what the power structure seeks them to represent. It is prostitution.”

—  Ai Weiwei

2000-09, Truth to Power, 2008

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The Chinese authorities think of artists as prostitutes. And in reality it’s true: in the Communist system artists just…" by Ai Weiwei?
Ai Weiwei photo
Ai Weiwei 218
Chinese concept artist 1957

Related quotes

James Baldwin photo
Dorothy Thompson photo

“[The Communist’s] objective is not to secure ‘agreements’ or ‘compromises,’ but to use the tribunes of governments for disruptive agitation, and destroy the representative system from within… Any Communist, sitting in any ‘bourgeoisie’ government, represents only the Communist International.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, “The Truth about Communism” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051180423&view=1up&seq=5 (1948), p. 9

Marshall McLuhan photo

“Ads represent the main channel of intellectual and artistic effort in the modern world.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Commonweal, Vol. 58 (1953), p. 557
1950s

Steve Wozniak photo

“It had to be that artistically perfect, because it represents yourself when you do a great design.”

Steve Wozniak (1950) American inventor, computer engineer and programmer

Bloomberg Business interview (2014)

Friedrich Engels photo
George Henry Lewes photo

“An artist produces an effect in virtue of the distinctness with which he sees the objects he represents, seeing them not vaguely as in vanishing apparitions, but steadily, and in their most characteristic relations. To this Vision he adds artistic skill with which to make us see.”

George Henry Lewes (1817–1878) British philosopher

The Principles of Success in Literature (1865)
Context: An artist produces an effect in virtue of the distinctness with which he sees the objects he represents, seeing them not vaguely as in vanishing apparitions, but steadily, and in their most characteristic relations. To this Vision he adds artistic skill with which to make us see. He may have clear conceptions, yet fail to make them clear to us: in this case he has imagination, but is not an artist. Without clear Vision no skill can avail. Imperfect Vision necessitates imperfect representation; words take the place of ideas.

“We feminists think that women deserve the right NOT to prostitute.”

Melissa Farley (1942) American psychologist

Unequal (2005) http://action.web.ca/home/catw/readingroom.shtml?x=81265&AA_EX_Session=7adbbc717533b7d9c60073d5b06387f3

John F. Kennedy photo

Related topics