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 CHILDISHThe 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.
More Billy Childish Quotes
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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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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 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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I think that the mythology of Van Gogh’s life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.
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When I was better known than her, she put my name in that tent. I was asked to do Celebrity Big Brother, but why should I? We live in an age where fame is not related to what you do.
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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’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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It is an artist’s duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw.
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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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One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.
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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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I’ve dubbed myself as an amateur, not because I work in different field, but because I do what I do for love.
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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 don’t spend a lot of time working if I can help it.
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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.
BILLY CHILDISH