Before 1999, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas offered to get me exhibitions, but joining the Stuckists put a kaibosh on all that – because I wasn’t prepared to be controlled.
BILLY CHILDISHWe had the same kind of unemployment here as they had in the worst hit places in the North and you’re meant to be on a cushy wicket in the South.
More Billy Childish Quotes
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We believe in a society in delusion, and if you’re awake and not deluded people tell you you’re mad. That’s why I’m a freak and they’re not. But I’m actually not.
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We had the same kind of unemployment here as they had in the worst hit places in the North and you’re meant to be on a cushy wicket in the South.
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Failure is fantastic, because you meet yourself and get to know your limitations. This is how I express myself, and I can’t do it any other way.
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Bowie and McCartney arrived, and the biscuits and caviare started and I left immediately. I don’t like shouting across rooms, with people in shiny suits who look like used-car salesmen.
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Being a fan of authentic Dada, I find today’s art – what I call ‘Bankers’ Dada’ – mind-numbingly dull.
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I’ve always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the ’80s it was a surprise to me.
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I’m going to get a pair of wire-snips, and I’ve also started a new campaign to have blank CDs on jukeboxes so you can play the silence.
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I like being on the margins. You work better there.
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The most challenging work I’ve seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, ‘A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards’, is apt in these days of witless chancers.
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I’ve not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I’ll listen to ‘Spiral Scratch’ by the Buzzcocks, or ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.
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I loved moustaches. I used to draw myself with one. When I was 14, I was really into war and Van Gogh.
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I agreed to co-found the Stuckists to be allowed to say what I wanted, and I left the Stuckists because I didn’t really want to be in them in the first place.
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One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.
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I liked drawing and painting, because the only failure would be to listen to the doubters who wanted me to stop drawing and painting because ‘you aren’t going to make a living doing that.’ I liked looking in art books at the work of painters.
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We are not actually in charge of life, yet we behave as if we are the masters of our own destiny. The realization of this fact is quite a hard one. The ridiculousness of our pomposity and presumption can only result in anger or humor.
BILLY CHILDISH