Quotes About Artists

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".

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.

Bad artists ignore the darkness of human existence. Good artists often get stuck there. Great artists embrace the full catastrophe of our condition and find beyond it an even deeper truth of peace, healing, and redemption.

It is important that artists are not outside the equation, we don't stand on the sidelines. Artists are part of the story of a response, we cannot stand aside and let others make the response.

My parents are artists, so I grew up with my mom having bonfires, seven guitars, and talented musicians and artists around like Jack Hirschman.

My parents are artists; in their world, in the world of modern artists, you are supposed to just go into your studio and tune everything out, and your entire relationship with your work is supposed to be a super private one. That was the way to do it and you weren't deeply truly artistic if that wasn't the way you were engaging the press.

As long as artists can make something, artists will continue to survive.

I was interested by the idea that artists working in a totalitarian dictatorship or tsarist autocracy are secretly and slightly shamefully envied by artists who work in freedom. They have the gratification of intense interest: the authorities want to put them in jail, while there are younger readers for whom what they write is pure oxygen.

Things have changed. I almost feel like it's more adaptable, and you can decide your own career now. I feel artists have so much more of a voice and so much more power now. It's really inspiring to see how a lot of the young artists use their platforms.

We as artists cannot be politicians. We as artists can only be truth-tellers.

Today we've learned to celebrate mediocrity. Back in the day we had creative artists; today we have created artists.

I suppose the good artists, the righteous artists, somehow manage to be exuberant, and the embarrassed artist has this idea that everybody has to stop being so excited, which I find so distasteful.

I feel like I've been training my entire career for this moment in a lot of ways. So many artists just want to draw Batman, and I'm getting the opportunity to do the backups in a brand-new Scott Snyder project that has so many artists.

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.

The artist’s task is to save the soul of mankind; and anything less is a dithering while Rome burns. Because of the artists, who are self-selected, for being able to journey into the Other, if the artists cannot find the way, then the way cannot be found.

Hollywood used to be run by artists and people who loved artists... people who wanted to make movies for all the right reasons. For the love. The Art. To tell stories. Yes to make money as well, but it was about both. Now I feel, it's mostly about bottom line and making money.

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.

Immature artists imitate. Mature artists steal.

You listen to Bob Dylan and you can't help but think of the 60s, it's very relational and if artists are true artists and not just mere musicians they need to be truthful because the music doesn't come from them, it comes from the universe and it's to be shared. At best, we're skilled presenters, and I say that at best.

Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them.

We, as artists, we have the right to express ourselves. That is our first amendment, freedom of speech. But I also believe that we have an obligation to the youth to be somewhat responsible in what we say on records. But I think that comes with age. I think that comes with artists growing up and becoming assured of who they are as people.

Leonard de Vinci, for example, is a great artist, but he is living in the past. However, I don't feel John Cage and Matsuzawa Yutaka as artists who live in the past. Their ideas are still alive in our world because they express the very important concerns of our age. That is why I could trust them as "contemporary artists".

Since the time of the ancient Greeks a democracy has depended on its philosophers and creative artists. It can only flourish by continuous probing, prodding, and questioning of the social conditions under which man exists and tries to better himself. One of the first moves of a dictatorship is to stifle the artists and thinkers who have the ability to stir up dissent from any prescribed dogma which might enslave them. Because the artist can arouse the curiosity and conscience of his community, he becomes a threat to those who have taken power.

I guess with the generation we live in, we just want to be entertained at the end of the day. A lot of artists make themselves accessible, so they feel like every artist should be like that. Some artists shouldn't be so accessible, to me.

Art feeds off art...and artists feed off artists.

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."

For spiritual companions I have had the many artists who have relied on nature to help shape their imagination. And their most elaborate equipment was a deep reverence for the world through which they passed. Photographers share something with these artists. We seek only to see and to describe with our own voices, and, though we are seldom heard as soloists, we cannot photograph the world in any other way.

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.

And, because my role in society - or any artist or poet's role - is to try to express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel, not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all. And it's like that's the job of the artist in society, not to...they're not some alienated being living on the outskirts of town. It's fine to live on the outskirts of town, but artists must reflect what we all are. … If that's taken it too much on meself, I feel that artists are that - they're reflections of society... Mirrors.

I do know that there is a difference between artists who are career-driven and artists who have a calling and are just compelled to make music, compelled to perform live, and the business isn't the reason they're doing it. In fact, there isn't really a reason. You just do it.

Simply according artistic works the same protection as nonartistic works may not be sufficient to protect creativity. After all, the very essence of artistic expression is invention and artists necessarily draw on their own experience. But if the rules of liability are unclear, artists will not be able to know how much disguise is sufficient to protect their claims from the claims of those who may see themselves in the portrayals.

I've always been a firm believer that soul music never dies. The artists we still listen to today, years after their music was first heard are mostly soul artists; Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Chaka Khan. We still sing along to all of them with our hearts.

Scott has to be one of the most talented artists I've ever seen. He really captures his subjects in a unique way. He is extremely generous as well. How many artists are willing to donate some of their best works to charity? The Texas Sports Hall of Fame has benefited greatly from Medlock's donated paintings, which are the cornerstones of our auction!

We have banished our artists to the fringe of society and tell them to eat cake. It is our artists who choose freedom over safety and use their talents to question and confront the culture.

The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do [with great artists]; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star.

The moment artists can just do what they love to do then music will go right back to where it used to be. I mean back in the '60s and '70s and '80s, that's what it was.

Religion is a group of scam artists that sell the calming idea that your body is a temple of God, while your mind belongs to them.

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.

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.

what a writer does is to try to make sense of life. I think that's what writing is, I think that's what painting is. It's seeking that thread of order and logic in the disorder, and the incredible waste and marvelous profligate character of life. What all artists are trying to do is to make sense of life.

Good leaders, competent leaders must see it as primary task to create friendliness. This something within the scope of most people. Now artists, like writers and sort of course have an added option of using their scale and talent with this in view. It is their business to create an environment in which our people will prosper and be happy.

I assumed from the outset that photography was already art, and that I and other people working in photography were artists. I understand now that this was a minority point of view.

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.

Each state of the human mind has some parable in the physical creation by which it is shadowed forth; nor is it only artists and poets, but even the most abstract thinkers that have drawn from this source. Lively activity we name fire; time is a stream that rolls on, sweeping all before it; eternity is a circle; a mystery is hid in midnight gloom, and truth dwells in the sun. Nay, I begin to believe that even the future destiny of the human race is prefigured in the dark oracular utterances of bodily creation.

I think we listen to music because we want to be changed. Music is not solely for our entertainment. Music has such tremendous power to bring joy. To me, that's our job as artists. Not happiness, not a groove, whatever. You must bring joy. I think that's the assignment. I have no doubt about it.

I think people like to see the lives of artists that are legends. They always go through the dark periods and I think just as humans we like to see that and them coming out of it. I love those kinds of movies.

I feel like the internet also affects originality a lot, because music is so easily shared nowadays, it seems like artists have collectively explored most of the grounds that music has to offer.

I influenced the BG style by not being able to draw perspective. The BG artists developed cool graphic painting styles to make my bad backgrounds look like they were that way on purpose.