Art & Creativity Quote by Hugo Pratt

Art likes to pose as timeless, but Pratt drags it back into the messy present: taste is a weather system, not a temple. “The fact is” reads like a shrug with teeth - a realist’s preface that punctures the romance of pure aesthetic judgment. He isn’t saying art is fake; he’s saying our relationship to it is contingent, and artists ignore that at their peril.

Coming from a cartoonist, the line carries extra bite. Comics have long been treated as disposable culture, their legitimacy rising and falling with critical trends, bookstore shelving categories, and the occasional prestige anointing. Pratt, best known for Corto Maltese, worked in a medium that constantly had to negotiate between popular demand and artistic ambition. When he says even art is subject to fashion, he’s also quietly indicting the gatekeepers who pretend their preferences are eternal law while following the herd a few years later.

The subtext is double-edged: fashion can cheapen art by rewarding surface novelty, but it can also liberate it by creating openings. What gets called “serious” shifts; what gets rediscovered shifts; what gets funded shifts. Pratt’s statement reads like a field guide for surviving those cycles: make the work, understand the moment, and don’t confuse today’s applause or neglect with a final verdict.

It’s a sober, almost democratic take: art isn’t above culture. It’s inside it, jostled by trends, markets, and the hunger to feel current.