Popular quotes about Artist! Wisdom and inspiration are here! | page 32
Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good.
Paul Simon[The artist's aim is] not to instruct the viewer, but to give him information... . The artist would follow his predetermined premise to its conclusion, avoiding subjectivity. Chance, taste, or unconsciously remembered forms would play no part in the outcome. The serial artist does not attempt to produce a beautiful or mysterious object but functions merely as a clerk cataloguing the results of his premise.
Sol LeWittThe artist and the multitude are natural enemies. They always will be, both ways. The artist is an enemy of the multitude, and the multitude is the enemy of the artist. And when the disguise comes off and they're both standing facing one another, they're just there at odds end.
Robert AltmanThe need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all. . . Fear is what blocks an artist. The fear of not being good enough. The fear of not finishing. The fear of failure and of success. The fear of beginning at all.
Julia CameronThe critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion.
H. L. MenckenThe artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had more artist.
Robert BreaultA photographer is a photographer and an artist is an artist. I don't believe in labels or titles. Why should a painter or sculptor who has probably never challenged the rules be an artist just because his title and an art school education automatically make him one.
Peter LindberghTo be an artist it is not necessary to make a living from our creations. Nor is it necessary to have work hanging in fine museums or the praise of critics . . . To be an artist it is necessary to live with our eyes wide open, to breathe in the colors of mountain and sky, to know the sound of leaves rustling, the smell of snow, the texture of bark . . . To be an artist is to notice every beautiful and tragic thing, to cry freely, to collect experience and shape it into forms that others can share.
Jan PhillipsEven 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 HustonMost people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.
Lukas FossIf you study a great work of art, you'll probably find the artist was a kind of genius. And geniuses are different to you and me. So let's have no talk of temperamental, self-absorbed and petulant babies. Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on. I love them all.
Charles SaatchiI think now it's the money who tells the artist what to do - it's not the artist who tells the money what to do. And things move very fast, which is hard, because sometimes you need more time to be creative. I guess no one has a loud mouth like I did. They don't dare to scream loudly what they think. But you can't take fashion too seriously. The whole thing is about giving the woman who wears your clothes some power, some fun, some service. It's great to make it as art. But first, it's a service for someone.
Thierry MuglerThe only happy artist is a dead artist, because only then you can't change. After I die, I'll probably come back as a paintbrush.
Sylvester StalloneI think I'm enjoying writing for me.I know what's in my head, so there's a little less margin for error, but I think I really would like to write for an artist, and obviously it really depends on the artist, and the sort of story I would do.
David FinchThe worst scientist is he who is not an artist; the worst artist is he who is no scientist.
Armand TrousseauI think it's what any artist would want: to feel like their work can be taken in on a level of experience beyond the headline or the press release. I don't think any artist wants to be reduced to a press release. We have a whole industry whose function it is to process and present information. There's nothing wrong with it, but it's not the thing.
David SalleI have a master plan as an artist. I've always said I'm not going to be punching nobody's clock. I will work as an artist to survive in this world.
Erykah BaduThat is the creative artist - a penalty of the creative artist - wanting to make order out of chaos.
Ursula NordstromYou are right in demanding that an artist approach his work consciously, but you are confusing two concepts: the solution of a problem and the correct formulation of a problem. Only the second is required of the artist.
Anton ChekhovOne of the things that I am happy about in my life as an artist is that I am not considered a Hispanic artist.
Andres SerranoThe technician should never forget that he is an artist, the artist never that he is a technician
Poul HenningsenAn artist, if he's unselfish and passionate, is always a living protest. Just to open his mouth is to protest: against conformism, against what is official, public, or national, what everyone else feels comfortable with, so the moment he opens his mouth, an artist is engaged, because opening his mouth is always scandalous.
Pier Paolo PasoliniTo all appearances the artist acts like a mediumistic being who, from the labyrinth beyond time and space, seeks his way out to a clearing. If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All this decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out.
Marcel DuchampI see the artist as a participant, a co-producer of reality. I do not see the artist as a person who sits at a distance and evaluates.
Olafur EliassonIf you go to a master to study and learn the techniques, you diligently follow all the instructions the master puts upon you. But then comes the time for using the rules in your own way and not being bound by them....You can actually forget the rules because they have been assimilated. You are an artist. Your own innocence now is of one who has become an artist, who has been, as it were, transmuted.... You can't have creativity unless you leave behind the bounded, the fixed, all the rules.
Joseph CampbellWell, this week's peeve might be... when art writers talk about an artist's 'efforts,' meaning their work. It always sounds patronizing to me, like 'I'll give you an E for effort.' How about the artist's 'effortlessnesses' instead? It's certainly something, or at least the appearance of something, that I aspire to myself.
James NaresThe only difference between an artist and a lunatic is, perhaps, that the artist has the restraint or courtesy to conceal the intensity of his obsession from all except those similarly afflicted.
Osbert SitwellBy being willing to be a bad artist, you have a chance to be an artist, and perhaps, over time, a very good one.
Julia CameronEven though I build buildings and I pursue my architecture, I pursue it as an artist. I deliberately keep a tiny studio. I don't want to be an architectural firm. I want to remain an artist.
Maya LinI'm not a pop rapper. That's nothing against pop music - I love pop music. I've jumped on pop records for people and still will, but I'm not a pop artist. I didn't start from there. I started in underground music. I consider myself an underground artist, as well as a producer.
Juicy JNever 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. LawrenceChrist alone, of all the philosophers, magicians, etc., has affirmed eternal life as the most important certainty, the infinity of time, the futility of death, the necessity and purpose of serenity and devotion. He lived serenely, as an artist greater than all other artists, scorning marble and clay and paint, working in the living flesh. In other words, this peerless artist, scarcely conceivable with the blunt instrument of our modern, nervous and obtuse brains, made neither statues nor paintings nor books. He maintained in no uncertain terms that he made ... living men, immortals.
Vincent Van GoghI have a general feeling that writers and artists who are in this peculiar situation, of being a persecuted artist, all anyone ever asks about is the persecution. It may well be that's the last thing in the world they want to talk about. There were many years in which every journalist in the world wanted to talk to me, but nobody wanted to talk to me about my work. That felt deeply frustrating because I felt there was an attempt to stifle me as an artist. The best revenge I could have was to write.
Salman RushdieWhen a painting is finished, it's like a new born child, and the artist himself must have time for understanding. How then do you expect an amateur to understand that which the artist dos not yet comprehend.
Henri MatisseThe real risks for any artist are taken in pushing the work to the limits of what is possible, in the attempt to increase the sum of what it is possible to think. Books become good when they go to this edge and risk falling over it -when they endanger the artist by reason of what he has, or has not, artistically dared.
Salman RushdieThere's not too many artist that can handle what we would call an Christian R&B sound. It's kind of a limited field as far as singers go. Just hoping that more artist like that can resonate and grow.In terms of female rappers, man hey come on! We're here...come talk to us!
LeCraeThe artist never really has any control over the impact of his work. If he starts thinking about the impact of his work, then he becomes a lesser artist.
Aasif MandviI'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 ParkerWhat an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.
David HockneyWhat is it that an artist does when he is left alone in his studio? My conclusion was that if I was an artist and I was in the studio, then everything I was doing in the studio should be art . . . . From that point on, art became more of an activity and less of a product.
Bruce NaumanThe integrity of being an artist for Frank Stella means going into the unknown.A great artist is somebody who's not scared to reinvent themselves and to start all over again. And some artists do it once, twice, three times in their career. He's done it probably a dozen times or more.
Frank StellaI think that, right now, I am travelling in many different directions in my mind, on where I wanted to be. So much is wantin' to go back, but I still gotta move forward. But I think it's just that I'm my worst critic at all times, you know? And when I make somethin', it may be five or ten cuts later before I actually call it what it is. I've always been that kind of artist. I'm gonna put myself through the sweat for it, because I think, as an artist, that's what made me iller, is the fact that I didn't wanna just put out anything and everything. It's just a process, you know what I mean?
RaekwonI was trying to focus on Margaret's trajectory as an artist, as a woman and an artist. Hopefully Cavendish experts won't be angry at me for anything I've left out. I feel like all the major movements of her life are there.
Danielle Dutton