Art & Creativity Quote by Rebecca West

Art that politely asks to be liked is decoration; West is arguing for art that risks being disliked. Her line frames authenticity as friction: the real test isn’t whether a work earns applause, but whether it refuses easy agreement. “Start an argument” doesn’t mean a shallow scandal or contrarian posturing. It suggests a dynamic in which the artist asserts a vision that collides with the audience’s habits of feeling and thinking. The “argument” is the work doing its job: forcing the viewer to negotiate with it rather than consume it.

The subtext is combative in a specifically West-ian way. As a novelist, critic, and political writer shaped by the convulsions of the early 20th century, she distrusted comfort as a moral stance. Audiences don’t just bring taste; they bring ideology, class expectations, and a hunger for reassurance. West implies that an artist who caters to those appetites may produce something competent, even beautiful, but not “authentic” in the sense that matters: faithful to experience rather than fashion.

The line also needles a sentimental idea of “connection” between creator and public. West isn’t anti-audience; she’s anti-passivity. An argument is a relationship with stakes, a refusal to let either side stay intact. Great art, in her view, rearranges the terms of engagement: it makes spectators answer back, defend themselves, revise themselves. The artist doesn’t win by silencing dissent; the work wins by making dissent unavoidable.