Quotes About Artists

The best artists are people who don't consider themselves artists, and the people who do are usually the most pretentious and annoying. They've got their priorities wrong. They're just doing it to be artists rather than because they want to do it.

I've watched so many women, from Kathleen Hanna all the way up to Taylor Swift, whether they're pop artists or rock stars or fine artists or writers, it is the subhistory of female artists that if you're going to make art, you're also going to have a full-time job of defending your right to make art.

I personally have never trusted museums. ... It is because museums, broadly speaking, live off of the art and artifacts of others, often art and artifacts that have been obtained by dubious means. But they also manipulate whatever it is they present to the public; hence, until Judy Chicago, in the 1970s ... few women artists were hung in any major museum. Indian artists? Artifacts only, please. Black artists? Something musical, maybe? And so forth.

The vast majority of artists worldwide are unrepresented, disenfranchised or otherwise don't have an opportunity to sell or have their work shown. Giving those artists access to the collector community, expanding the collector community and giving artists a chance to be discovered is the goal of iStockphoto.

It's not curators, it's not critics, it's not the public, it's not collectors who find great artists - it's other artists.

Art is a path on which we honour our world. Art may not be the only path, but it is a good path, even though at times a difficult one. As bearers of this honour, we artists do not need to simply render our world as we see it but as we might ourselves redesign it. As artists, one of our privileges is to invent.

A lot of bands are still just bands that artists ask to get involved, but a lot of artists are using sound they create. This is different from referencing music.

I prefer artists who are creative more than artists who are technical, I think everybody would agree with that.

I think I've been able to witness Canadian hip-hop get a lot more respect from our own people. I think some of the artists that came before me were doing their thing but lacked a strong next generation of artists to help them capitalize.

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

During the last 35 years, the artists multiplied, the public grew enormously, the economy exploded, and so-called contemporary art became fashionable. All these parameters changed the art world form its previous aspects and fundamentals - the explosion of museums and institutions, explosion of Biennales and Triennials, explosion of money, explosion of interest, explosion of artists, explosion of countries interested in contemporary exhibitions, explosion of the public. Not to see that is to be more than blind.

Kerry James Marshall especially was a huge influence on me in graduate school, as were Wangechi Mutu and Julie Mehretu. These artists are titans. My education was also very much in comic books, so I've been going to comic book events in New York and have met a few artists there.

Artists don't need criticism, artists need love

I think that watching artists, soulful artists, they get into it. It's always the way I perform, so when I'm on stage I just try to get into it - I'm in my own world. That's the whole thing about the stage, it's like a sacred place. They're [the audience] watching into the different world, right, so it's like you see performers and they're in the same room, so it's a different vibe. Sometimes it's great, but I try to separate it, you know, I wanna separate it 'cos otherwise I feel naked. It just feels natural.

I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did.

Art is theft”) and Igor Stravinsky (“Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal”), I’ve always stolen from the people I admire – not plagiarized, mind you, but stolen bits of ideas and stylistic influences. If you steal widely enough, after all, your models are inevitably changed and the result is in the end completely yours. Kleon cites André Gide to this point, in a quotation I love: “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But, since no one was listening, everything must be said again.

The real purveyors of the news are artists, for artists are the ones who infuse fact with perception, emotion, and appreciation...We are beginning to realize that emotions and imagination are more potent in shaping public sentiment and opinion than information and reason.

Experimental artists build their skills gradually over the course of their careers, improving their work slowly over long periods. These artists are perfectionists and are typically plagued by frustration at their inability to achieve their goals.

I think all those artists are artists who are appreciated because you believe their words and you appreciate their honesty in their music. If you don't appreciate the honesty in the music, the beat can be fly as hell but you'll never give an emcee props.

I think for us, we don't feel like the future of music is in the act of being a record company. We feel like the future of the music business is in empowering artists to have better and better tools to communicate with their fans. We want to be people who are saying to artists, "Look, you don't need that company over there to release your album. You can do it this way." Almost more of a band partnership than a label-artist relationship. Not about ownership of content, but about empowerment.

For some artists the live performance is the chicken before the egg of writing or recording of repertoire. For other artists the writing or recording of repertoire is the chicken before the egg of live performance.

I think music should be free. I think all communication should be free. I think people should respect artists, and there should be a certain respect for artists who give their music away for free. If your music winds up on Napster and you approve of it, then the person downloading your music should at least go to your concert, should at least purchase your songs.

When people talk about imagination, they tend to think of fantasy or something made-up. But really imagination is a mode of perception. Which is maybe why so many artists have turned to the occult. Artists tend to feel like outsiders. Whether they are actually outsiders or not is also kind of irrelevant.

The very paradigm of revolution, of right versus wrong, good versus bad, is a relic with no bearing on the present. Yet artists, exhibitions, and curators valorize the sixties. People who wrote about these artists 30 years ago still write about them in the same ways, often for the same magazines.

Coming from Britain, I was terrified of meeting all these other artists, because artists over there tend to fight with each other a lot, the premise being that there's not enough room for everybody.

Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.

I didn't have to be a pop singer with a certain look. When I started, there was really a revolution in natural artists with blues and folk artists crossing over; otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to get started.

I think that that's why artists make art - it is difficult to put into words unless you are a poet. What it takes is being open to the flow of universal creativity. The Zen artists knew this.

As a label I don't care about piracy. I want the music that we [my band] love to be heard by as many people as possible. The more people like the music we put out, the better the label and artists will do. If anyone genuinely likes what we do they will find us, buy our vinyl or come to see the artists play live.

It doesn't upset artists to find out that artists used lenses or mirrors or other aids, but it certainly does upset the art historians.

Without intermediate artists, music is what "American Idol" decides is great or made by the very poor, because Sharon Osbourne's made everything free. No, we have to support our local artists. It's just that simple. Otherwise, we will have no art.

Obviously, the duty of artists is there, but it's more an indictment of the political system that someone like Zinn views artists as the seers, idealizing them as the people responsible for inspiring change.

I'm definitely obsessed about artists and the type of music and the playing and the tone and all that kind of thing - I'm not obsessed about what the best Beatles album is. I just think if The Beatles are great, they're great.

I think, sometimes, artists release music too fast. If you just sit back and listen to the track for a little bit you could pick and choose how you want to do it and see if you really feel the song, because sometimes you might not even like the song after a few listens.

We think it hugely important to support young artists, there is a war against that kind of artistry, that kind of creation...When somebody is 19 years old, they're gonna do what they're gonna do just like we did... For me the most important thing was for him to know anytime he can call and I'll come whatever happens.

After a point of time, when you get success and fame, money and everything, the purpose of life has to be redefined. For me, I think that purpose is to build bridges. Artists can do that very easily, more than politicians.

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.

I think there can be a misrepresentation of who I am a lot of times because I might be more quiet than other artists. I don't walk in the room going, "Here I am!" I'm going to be the guy standing in the corner taking everything in. I think that can be taken the wrong way, as if I'm not interested in what's going on around, but it's not really the case.

I just close my eyes and act like I'm a 3-year-old. I try to get as close to a childlike level as possible because we were all artists back then. So you just close your eyes and think back to when you were as young as you can remember and had the least barriers to your creativity.

I think the best actors in the world are here in New York City. And this city is just so vibrant the energy is just phenomenal. Great crews here. All the technicians, all the artists that work in this industry. I've just been very happy with the body that we've been able to do, especially those films we shot here in New York City.

It's a sign of this film's greatness that the enormous sadness that accompanies the final leave-taking of the circus interior is a good deal more than the conclusion of an unpretentious evening's entertainments; it's a sublime and awesome coda to the career of one of this century's greatest artists.

The worth of a civilization or a culture is not valued in the terms of its material wealth or military power, but by the quality and achievements of its representative individuals - its philosophers, its poets and its artists.

We need that expression. Whether we want to call it protest or not, we need to express and echo the echoes of the people. Artists need to do that.

I think it is so great when artists use their voice to help other people and it is really great to be a part of the benefit.

It's high time for the art world to admit that the avant-garde is dead. It was killed by my hero, Andy Warhol, who incorporated into his art all the gaudy commercial imagery of capitalism (like Campbell's soup cans) that most artists had stubbornly scorned.

For artists it's a lot easier to make art in bad times than it is in good times. When you've got no money it's easy to just drink your way through it and make great art. But if you're making lots of money it can be very problematic.

Artists and art institutions have to learn how to play hardball. A democratic society needs a democratic art and we have a right to demand it.

Visionary art sure has played a vital role in my own "soul's journey," and I would say it's been important for many artists and viewers throughout history. Visionary art is one of the primary ways that human contact with higher subtle dimensions gets translated into our communally shared physical dimension.