photo via @johnspatricc
Kanye West received an honorary doctorate degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) on May 11, 2015, reports Jillian Steinhauer in Hyperallergic.
At the ceremony, West delivered an hour-long Q&A sesh/lecture loaded with nuggets of wisdom. Listen to the full audio here, or enjoy our favorite quotes below.
It’s hard to be an artist:
It’s moments like this that make the fight so worth it, to know that there are people who appreciate how hard it is to be an artist in an industrialized, commercial world.
inspired by The Arnolfini Portrait by Jan van Eyck at the National Gallery of London / image via arthistorykanye.tumblr.com
Kanye would give “art” five stars on Yelp:
I wanted to talk about this barrier between art, music, and fashion. Because as you know, with the class system, you know who’s the highest, of course? Art. Art’s considered to be the highest on the class system of creatives.
inspired by the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci at the Louvre / via arthistorykanye.tumblr.com
Artists have a responsibility:
I think the responsibility we have as artists — and I will mention myself in the same breath as you because on Tues i will have a doctorate [applause] — but I feel, [in] our time as artists, our responsibility was to the truth. Cause how else could history be documented? How else could our time be represented, this time that we had? Who’s gonna stand there and say how it really is right now? Who’s gonna express that?
Art is what you can get away with:
The … privilege of art, is to express exactly what you feel and to never lose that. Every opportunity that I get, every expanded opportunity to paint, I feel like I’m getting younger and younger and younger. The idea of becoming an adult is the idea of conforming and compromising. My daughter, I know she goes to sleep and she dreams this whole plan about how she’s gonna get away with whatever she can possible by the time she wakes up. And I think that that’s also the responsibility of artists, to try to get away with whatever you can. Because everyone’s compromising. Everyone is placing themselves in a social debt based on how big their house is and how fast their car is and how fast the car is next door to them. They’re losing their art, they’re losing their passion, they’re losing their purpose. It’s like the whole world is based on showing how much you have or posturing that way.
West’s explanation of the universe:
Everything is art. We’re all a big part of one giant movie, one giant painting.
This honorary art degree proves that he and Kim’s “accidental” art history instagram poses must truly be on purpose – and their master scheme appears to be working.
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