Quotes About Artists

I love knowing and learning about people around the world displaying my art online. Also, it's how I learn about new artists that are in various parts of the world. The positive thing about Tumblr and Instagram is that they're a fantastic platform for art lovers. I also like, when I search for my art and it says, "see also or related artists," and I see those other artists that relate to me, at least according to the internet. I think it's fascinating - it's interesting to see hashtags people are using in relation to my work. It's another tool of communication.

The artists could be dead, but some of them are not so distant from us, and make us feel as if they are alive with us. Such artists are worth calling "contemporary artists".

I think I'm inspired mostly by other artists that aren't actors, like writers or singers or artists, for being so brave.

The breakdown of the modern movement led to what later became known as postmodern-whatever the hell that means-referring to the mixture of people and backgrounds that became a common thing among artists in America. Many of the great artists in America, for example, came from Jewish families and backgrounds that fled all the way from Russia. It's remarkable, the great masters of American art and cinema who were coming from old roots in little villages there. And then Hollywood, and the haunting, hypnotic impact that American Cinema had throughout the world . . .

It is short-sighted, not to say stupid, in the correct desire to be relevant as Christian artists in an unchristian age, to pick up the secular fashion of the immediate generation before us and immerse oneself in that as your tradition. That's why Christian artists so often seem to be a generation late.

What I've learnt about artists over the years is, artists are usually the opposite to their music.

Our visual and musical artists have no incentive to be educated. So what we get is a bunch of uneducated artists inspiring misinformation, miseducation and illiteracy.

You witness the artists acting as witnesses, but they provide a point of view that's less monolithic. It's less official in a certain way. Many artists are speaking in the first person singular, as a reaction to dubbed-over media commentary. The thought is: "Enough with how we're represented by the media. Let me tell the story."

I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that's all they do, that's fine by me. If they're good at churning out tortured artists, that's great!

A lot of artists make art for five years, some artists make art for ten years, a few make art for fifteen: very few do it until they die.

Artists have made innovations in many areas... But whatever the nature of an artist's innovation, its importance ultimately depends on the extent of its influence on other artists.

The reason why I play around with the word legend is because this is my 7th CD and a lot of artists don't even make it that far. Many artists don't even pass three or four.

I think that these are different times, and different things are available to artists, and certain things have become passé. You've already seen the outcome of a lot of things that seemed to have a lot of potential. We've already heard that, and I can't tell you if it made a difference or not. But we already know that artists can do that, and they shouldn't feel threatened by doing it. They're probably not going to change the world. They're going to change a few people's perspectives and maybe make somebody's day at times, if they can.

You are always looking for already-felt emotions, just as you like to get an old pair of trousers back from the cleaners, which seem new when you don't look too closely. Artists are cleaners, don't let yourself be taken in by them. True modern works of art are made not by artists but quite simply by men.

I'm proud that I've been able to work with other artists to make sure that the smallest voices - the voices of our children - have a chance to be heard. Artists can reach, inspire, and motivate young people and leaders in a powerful way.

If you look at my collaborations, it is very much in line with all these others in the sense that it is a building of community, particularly among artists of color. This is what I learned from the example of elder African-American artists, which is where it is all coming from; to refuse to be silenced.

There are so many artists that are dyslexic or learning disabled, it's just phenomenal. There's also an unbelievably high proportion of artists who are left-handed, and a high correlation between left-handedness and learning disabilities.

All artists are anarchists in some way - some more extreme than others, but it's something that I think artists are supposed to do. We're supposed to present a different angle on everything, and I certainly think it is [art] as much as poetry, in my opinion.

People who aren't artists often feel that artists are inspired. But if you work at your art you don't have time to be inspired.

Part of the blame can be put at the artists' door, too - no question. But I see our involvement more as a consequence. When there is too much money at stake, the whole system gets corrupted. Artists can be very vulnerable to these mechanisms.

We've always had a tradition in America of hounding our artists to death. Look at the list of our great artists, you see a continual history of defeat, frustration, poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction. The best poets of my generation are all suicides.

If you look at the lives of artists, sitting in nature, painting, having the freedom. I think it's over. I think we're living in such a difficult moment of human development. Artists have more responsibility than ever before.

Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

Sometimes there are painters or very famous artists who start to become artists after they are dead because an audience or a public know about their art after they die.

Incompatibilists will tell you that a work of art has no meaning unless the artists could have chosen to create a different one, but actual artists often say things like "the book chose me" - that is, the work had to be. Some philosophers would call it "volitional necessity", and a similar case that's discussed is the case of Luther saying "here I stand, I can do no other".

I think what really separates artists from the rest of the world is that artists feel like they have permission to keep exploring and expressing their process. Most people censor that because they don't think it's good enough. Everything is measured against this patriarchal hierarchy of value, as if one person's singing voice is more important than another's.

I always want to encourage young artists. As the budgets get smaller, that might provide an opening for younger artists and more experimentation. Budgets had gotten quite large for art, as they had for architecture. I'm not going to cut back. The minute someone walks through my door, I go, "That's my thing and you got to let me do it."

Laborers want their kids to be merchants or business people. Business people want their kids to be professionals. Professionals want their kids to be academics, professors. Academics want their kids to be artists. And artists don't care if their kids are laborers or not. They can be anything.

Comic artists have always been part of my social circle. I just like hanging out with artists, and I always see them at conventions or a store signing or something. "Hey, we should do something together."

Every movement that slays its gods creates new ones, of course. I loathe talk of the sixties and seventies being a 'Greatest Generation' of artists, but if we're going to use such idiotic appellations, let this one also be applied to the artists, curators, and gallerists who emerged in the first half of the nineties.

Working with artists and other poets has made me aware that there was a bigger "me" that I hadn't been quite aware of. Plus we had a good time. It's so much fun to write, for example, with a big brush on a giant piece of paper and to help create visually attractive and surprising objects, which is not what you normally do when you're writing a poem. It's wonderful to create these pieces with artists.

I grew up in an artists community in New York, in a building that was government-subsidised for artists. No one made any money, but they made art for the sake of art.

Artists speak the truth to the public without fear of retribution or damage to their careers.

All of the artists did such a beautiful job I can’t thank them enough. I’m just honored that 'God Only Knows' was chosen. 'God Only Knows' is a very special song. An extremely spiritual song and one of the best I’ve ever written.

My passion is writing comics and storytelling, and I'm constantly working to improve. I hit my deadlines, I know how to work with and artists, I'm professional, and I bring my A-game every time.

It probably all started with The Beatles, and then I guess it goes out from there. Springsteen... Fleetwood Mac... I mean, that's all so inherent in us that when we're making records now, we take a lot from the artists who are around us.

I can't let the baggage of my private life get into work. Artists are more fragile than normal people. But I know that I am a role model for zillions of people, so no matter how deep you are hurting, you need to come out strong.

I always hope that my music can inspire someone, the same way other artists inspire me.

One of life's intriguing paradoxes is that hierarchical social order makes cheap rents and outré artists' colonies possible. Raffish bohemian neighborhoods flourished in the days of racial segregation; under integration the artistic poor have no safe places in which to create.... If America lacks a vigorous culture it is partly because studios and ateliers have become crack houses.

There are so many great artists, I think, who kind of suffer from being icons, legends, acknowledged masters.

The type of pop culture that is honestly very moving and powerful to me is [when artists] do their homework. They make it real.

Defeat furnishes good material to the poets and the artists, but none of us care to have the glory of the conquered apply to us.

Artists say that paintings are never done. I sort of feel the same way about music. I would never say something is perfect. There are performances that can generate a lot of emotion in me when I hear them, but I can't say if anything is perfect.

My favorite artists have always been Elvis and The Beatles and they still are!

And when you see artists like Donald Judd and so forth being referred to as conceptual, what the hell does that mean? It's a totally meaningless term.

It seems that our politicians see the world in black and white, so why not our artists? Did Woody Allen's 'Manhattan' have to be in black and white? No. But is it fantastic that it was? To see New York like that? Yes!

I have a specific set of, I have a specific sort of negative energies to deal with that might be specific to me, but it definitely something that all artists have to deal with at one point or another. But I think for me, it's just maybe more specific.

I think that we have a unique opportunity as performers and artists to be kind of the town criers and also to get more people to listen, so that's a blessing and a responsibility that I take very seriously.