Art & Creativity Quote by Richard Foreman

Foreman’s line reads like a rebuke to the lazy mythology that avant-garde art exists to scandalize the squares. Coming from a playwright whose work has often been labeled “confrontational,” it’s also slyly defensive: he’s refusing the cheap headline that frames experimental theater as a prank pulled on polite society. The sentence is built to sound almost aristocratic in its distance - “one does not,” “one’s life” - which quietly elevates the stakes. Shock, in this formulation, isn’t daring; it’s vulgar, a short-term effect unworthy of a lifetime.

The subtext is a fight over who gets to define seriousness. Audiences and critics often treat confusion or discomfort as proof of elitism, then flatten it into “provocation.” Foreman flips the accusation. If you think the goal is to shock you, that’s your own defensive story: a way to keep the work at arm’s length, to turn your disorientation into moral superiority (“I’m not fooled by this”). He insists on a different intent - not to offend, but to rewire attention.

Context matters: post-1960s theater trained audiences to expect transgression as a product category. By the time “edgy” became a marketing adjective, shock was no longer radical; it was a predictable beat. Foreman’s point is almost anti-branding. The artist’s real commitment isn’t to startling the crowd; it’s to pursuing an inner logic so obsessively that the audience’s comfort stops being the metric at all.