Contemporary Voices
“I think the main thing as an artist is that you realize that art leads a life of its own, that is, quite independently of the reality of social life, or work, etc. And realize that art cannot intervene in life, irrespective of whatever heroic ideals you may entertain… To pretend that art itself can make life better is a lie. And this lie is useful to certain ideologies, and is indeed required by them. So you pretend that if we could all go out an do a lot of painting then the world would be a better place. The reality is that if the world were a better place, then we wouldn’t need to do such senseless things as painting pictures, making pottery, that sort of thing. Absolute utopia is a world without art because living itself would be the art: a liberated form of work, a liberated form of life. If you want to try and imagine pure happiness, art wouldn’t have any place there any more.”
“Albert Oehlen in Conversation with Wilfred Dickhoff and Martin Prinzhorn,” Kunst Heute 7, Cologne 1991; in English in C. Harrison and P. Wood, Art in Theory 1990-2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, Oxford: Blackwell, 2003.
