"MTV lets us do whatever we want. For me, there is freedom in serving an experienced client who knows what they want and has the money to do it. MTV is that for us"
About this Quote
Nicholson’s line plays a neat game of inversion: “freedom” doesn’t live in rebellion, but in patronage. The surprise is the point. Artists are supposed to chafe against clients, especially big institutions, yet he’s describing the dream scenario as a well-funded commissioner with clear taste. That isn’t selling out in his framing; it’s relief. The constraint is the liberation.
The quote also quietly demystifies “artistic freedom” as a material condition, not a personality trait. When he says MTV “lets us do whatever we want,” he immediately qualifies it: what he wants is the bandwidth to execute, and bandwidth costs money. The “experienced client” is doing more than paying the invoice; they’re removing friction - second-guessing, dithering, moral panic, endless revisions born from insecurity. In that world, the artist isn’t free because no one is watching, but because the watcher is confident enough not to micromanage.
There’s subtext, too, about the modern art economy: taste-makers don’t just reflect culture, they bankroll it. MTV (a brand built on youth, speed, and spectacle) becomes a contemporary version of the old patron, only with broadcast reach instead of palace walls. Nicholson is admitting that the avant-garde often needs an establishment to underwrite it - and that the most radical thing a powerful institution can do is be decisive, competent, and flush.
Contextually, it reads like a moment when artists were renegotiating their relationship to mass media: not as contamination, but as infrastructure.
The quote also quietly demystifies “artistic freedom” as a material condition, not a personality trait. When he says MTV “lets us do whatever we want,” he immediately qualifies it: what he wants is the bandwidth to execute, and bandwidth costs money. The “experienced client” is doing more than paying the invoice; they’re removing friction - second-guessing, dithering, moral panic, endless revisions born from insecurity. In that world, the artist isn’t free because no one is watching, but because the watcher is confident enough not to micromanage.
There’s subtext, too, about the modern art economy: taste-makers don’t just reflect culture, they bankroll it. MTV (a brand built on youth, speed, and spectacle) becomes a contemporary version of the old patron, only with broadcast reach instead of palace walls. Nicholson is admitting that the avant-garde often needs an establishment to underwrite it - and that the most radical thing a powerful institution can do is be decisive, competent, and flush.
Contextually, it reads like a moment when artists were renegotiating their relationship to mass media: not as contamination, but as infrastructure.
Quote Details
| Topic | Business |
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