Popular quotes about Artist! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 14
I don't think you have to earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, then art is what you do, whether or not you're paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation.
Tony KushnerI was associated with the Artist Placement Group in the early 1970s and David Hall, the video artist, was an Artist Placement Group artist. I was completely broke at that time, and he said to me, "Come and do some teaching" - he was head of department at Maidstone College of Art. And I went and did a couple of teaching days and practically the only person who showed up was David Cunningham [Flying Lizard's main man], with all of this finished work
David ToopWhen you are writing for an artist you are trying to get into that artist's point of view. What does that artist want to say? What do they care about? And musically, you want to show off that artist.
Frank WildhornI don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.
Federico FelliniMaking social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.
Susan SontagAn artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
Henry MillerWhat makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.
Seth GodinIt's a good feeling to be at a place where you know who you are as an artist. I didn't know back then, I just wanted to give my family a better life and myself. I wanted to sing, but I didn't know as an artist who I wanted to be and because of all those experiences, it helped shape me into who I am and what I've now realized and what it is that brings me happiness which is when I pick up the guitar and do records.
Tiffany VillarrealEven Michelangelo on his deathbed thought he'd done nothing to ennoble art. He wanted to destroy his work-the Pieta! And this from the greatest artist who ever lived. Of course I am not comparing my work to Michelangelo's. But this eternal dissatisfaction of the artist is what I was talking about.
John HustonI have absolutely no interest in rock and roll. I'm just being David Bowie. Mick Jagger is rock and roll. I mean, I go out and my music is roughly the format of rock and roll, I use the chord changes of rock and roll, but I don't feel I'm a rock and roll artist. I'd be a terrible rock artist, absolutely ghastly.
David BowieWe might say that both the artist and theneurotic bite off more than they can chew, but the artist spews it back out again and chews it over in an objectified way, as an exยญternal, active, work project.
Ernest BeckerWhen the work takes over, then the artist is enabled to get out of the way, not to interfere. When the work takes over, then the artist listens.
Madeleine L'EngleFundamentally the male artist approximates more to the psychology of woman, who, biologically speaking, is a purely creative being and whose personality has been as mysterious and unfathomable to the man as the artist has been to the average person.
Beatrice M. HinkleI feel that America is essentially against the artist, that the enemy of America is the artist, because he stands for individuality and creativeness, and that's un-American somehow.
Henry MillerWho but the artist has the power to open man up, to set free the imagination? The others - priest, teacher, saint, statesman, warrior - hold us to the path of history. They keep us chained to the rock, that the vultures may eat out our hearts. It is the artist who has the courage to go against the crowd; he is the unrecognized "hero of our time" - and of all time.
Henry MillerIt is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.
Mark RothkoIt became like a symbolic thing, to be โan artist.โ After Duchamp, I realized that being an artist is more about a lifestyle and attitude than producing some product.
Ai WeiweiI believe that a truly valuable artist must be an artist who realizes the impossibility of his task -and then continues to do it.
Keith JarrettIf you want to compete in Italy, the only accepted ways are brute force, or cunning. Like Machiavelli says, "Fronte otra forze." And neither of these two "virtues" is suited to an artist. The artist has to stay intelligent.
Francesco ClementeToday, each artist must undertake to invent himself, a lifelong act of creation that constitutes the essential content of the artist's work.
Harold RosenbergThe war between the artist and writer and government or orthodoxy is one of the tragedies of humankind. One chief enemy is stupidity and failure to understand anything about the creative mind. For a bureaucratic politician to presume to tell any artist or writer how to get his mind functioning is the ultimate in asininity.
Helen Foster SnowThe true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheThere are dangers for an artist in any academic environment. Academia rewards people who know their own minds and have developed an ironclad confidence in speaking them. That kind of assurance is death for an artist.
Christian WimanI love the idea of finding new talent, however you do it, and the television mechanism - seeing artists grow and rise to the occasion - is a medium that actually works because there's a way for the audience to get to know an artist and for the artist to improve.
Matt SerleticWorking a model liberated me from ever having to hold a day job. I transitioned from doing that to working full-time as an artist. If you're 19 and living cheap, being an artist model can sustain you. I dropped out of college at 21 and my illustration hadn't yet taken off. It is more than working in a store. It is a hard way to make a living but you earn more than in a similarly unskilled job.
Molly CrabappleFifteen minutes of fame doesn't make a career. An article in a magazine, newspaper, interview on television or multiple print ads may stroke your ego, but nothing much else. An artist's career is a lifetime venture. Just because an artist is on top doesn't mean they are sheltered from a crash. As has been stated, the higher you climb, the harder you fall.
Jack WhiteNever trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of the critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
D. H. LawrenceTo be an artist means to search, to find and look at these realities. To be an artist means to never look away.
Akira KurosawaThe artist is always searching for the meaning of life, his own and that of mankind, searching for truth. A system of uncertainty has entered our daily life. The pressures of mechanization and uniformity to which it is subject call for protest and the artist has only one means of expressing this, by music.
Bohuslav MartinuSome people think a martial artist has to be tough against everybody - that's not true at all. A martial artist has to be strong against bad people. But we must also be able to know and understand the feelings, moods and mentalities of good and bad individuals before we can comprehend when to be strong and when to be gentle.
Tsutomu OhshimaWell, to me, the tensile strength and the very definition of an artist is something that I would place at the top of a vertical hierarchy. To be an artist is to suffer and to lead a life without shelter. It takes a great amount of daring-do, self reinvention, imagination, familial loyalty, sacrifice, economic uncertainty, and the right to be wrong, the right to fail in order to achieve something of noticeable value.
Van Dyke ParksI'm kind of floating out there as an artist. I'm in a safe place where I can play a girlfriend or a best friend or a mommy or a lawyer, but a huge part of me is unused. I'm classically trained, historically inclined and somewhat revolutionary by nature, so I'm frustrated as an artist.
Nicole Ari ParkerI am a graphic artist heart and soul, though I find the term artist rather embarrassing.
M. C. EscherArtistry has to define the Artist so there is no other way but to create the kind of music that speaks about who you are and what's important to you, therefore individualizing the Artist.
Truth HurtsEvery artist who drew Batman after creator Bob Kane was a better artist than Kane [...].
Mike W. BarrContemporary art is based on that an artist is supposed to go into art history in the same way as an art historian. When the artist produces something he or she relates to it with the eye of an art historian/critic. I have the feeling that when I am working it is more like working with soap opera or glamour. It is emotional and not art criticism or history of art.
Odd NerdrumAdded to the moral solitude of the murderer comes the solitude of the artist, which can acknowledge no authority, save that of another artist.
Jean GenetA work of art does not need an explanation. The work has to speak for itself. The work may be subject to many interpretations, but only one was in the mind of the artist. Some artists say to make the work readable for the public is an artistโs responsibility, but I donโt agree with that. The only responsibility to be absolutely truthful to the self. My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing.
Louise BourgeoisI believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live.
Sol LeWittHaving people around you that are honest with you, and having a team around you that can actually track and communicate where things are working and where they're not working, is really an invaluable asset to an artist's career. I just see it time and again, people who have no clue about that stuff. It's frustrating, and I see the frustration for them. It's a weird thing being an artist, trying to navigate the music business with little to no help.
MuneshineMy friend Harry Nilsson used to say the definition of an artist was someone who rode way ahead of the herd and was sort of the lookout. Now you don't have to be that, to be an artist. You can be right smack-dab in the middle of the herd. If you are, you'll be the richest.
Albert BrooksThat is what diminishes the artist and his song. The artist is now hermetically sealed. The publishing company got him his deal and they expect to profit from his songs. So what if he is a better singer than a songwriter; let's put him in a room with a real songwriter. Something great is bound to come...except very often nothing great comes out of such contrived match-ups. Nobody knows where a great song comes from, and that's why so many writers credit the Lord as a co-writer (though I notice they never offer Him half the writer's royalties) when they come up with a real gem.
Michael KosserI have always felt the word 'advertising' is either a diminutive or derogatory term that kind of goes with stuff people don't like, and I always felt frustrated because I felt like I was a communication artist or a media artist. The best advertising is one of the art forms of our culture.
Lee Clow