7 Marshall McLuhan Quotes on Art

Marshall McLuhan quotes on art

6. Art is anything you can get away with.

16. Jacques Ellul observes in Propaganda: When dialogue begins, propaganda ends. His theme, that propaganda is not this or that ideology but rather the action and coexistence of all media at once, explains why propaganda is environmental and invisible. The total life of any culture tends to be 'propaganda', for this reason. It blankets perception and supresses awareness, making the counter environments created by the artist indispensable to survival and freedom. (p.77)

17. Another theme of the Wake that helps in the understanding of the paradoxical shift from cliche to archetype is 'pastimes are past times'. The dominant technologies of one age become the games and pastimes of a later age. In the twentieth century the number of past times that are simultaneously available is so vast as to create cultural anarchy. When all the cultures of the world are simultaneously present, the work of the artist in the elucidation of form takes on new scope and new urgency. Most men are pushed into the artist role. The artist cannot dispense with the principle of doubleness and interplay since this kind of hendiadys-dialogue is essential to the very structure of consciousness, awareness, and autonomy. (p.99)

35. Ads are the cave art of the twentieth century.

36. Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.

39. The Leonardo da Vinci of our time.

64. The artist is the only person; his antennae pick up these messages before anybody. So he is always thought of as being way ahead of his time because he lives in the present. (1970)