18 Quotes by Hans Haacke

What I'm very upset about is the attempt to dictate to museums what they show, and the statements made by politicians in Washington that have curtailed the freedom of the National Endowment for the Arts. The attention to those issues is deflected by the spin of my supposedly having trivialized the Holocaust.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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