Hans Haacke Quotes

#1. Art-making is just another part of the consciousness industry.

Hans Haacke

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

Hans Haacke

#3. In order to gain some insight into the forces that elevate certain products to the level of 'works of art' it is helpful - among other investigations - to look into the economic and political underpinnings of the institutions, individuals and groups who share in the control of power.

Hans Haacke

#4. If you look at the size of the art world in terms of the money that is being transacted compared to other parts of the 'consciousness industry,' it is minuscule. But if you look at what happens in this small sector, how it rubs off on the rest of it, it is astonishing.

Hans Haacke

#5. 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.

Hans Haacke

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

Hans Haacke

#7. 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.

Hans Haacke

#8. 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.

Hans Haacke

#9. Art in the art world, and culture in general, are branches of the media, which produces our political and social thinking climate.

Hans Haacke

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

Hans Haacke

#11. The artist's business requires an involvement in practically everything ... The total scope of information he receives day after day is of concern.

Hans Haacke

#12. An artist is not an isolated system. In order to survive he has to interact continuously with the world around him ... Theoretically there are no limits to his involvement.

Hans Haacke

#13. 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.

Hans Haacke

#14. Museums are managers of consciousness. They give us an interpretation of history, of how to view the world and locate ourselves in it. They are, if you want to put it in positive terms, great educational institutions. If you want to put it in negative terms, they are propaganda machines.

Hans Haacke

#15. It would be bypassing the issue to say that the artist's business is to work with this and that material or manipulate the findings of perceptual psychology, and that the rest should be left to other professions.

Hans Haacke