Quotes About Artists

There are dance artists, painting artists and writing artists. Authors are writing artists. You can practice art in whatever medium you choose, and words are mine.

There are so many artists these days that are trying to imitate other artists and go for a certain style; there's a lot of bullshit in the music industry. I don't want to deviate from anything else other than the music, cause that's why I listen to my favorite records - not because I like the way the artists dress.

We get better product when the focus is on the fans and the artists - all artists; musical artists; singers, the graphic designers, the painters, the DJs, I mean everybody, the writers. We can't allow ourselves to feel as if we're not important in the equation when we are everything!

I came at a time where male artists where dominating, so I had to do something quick to get people's attention. I wanted to let people know that women artists can hold their own compare to the men. Sex got their attention, while I open the road for the other female artists.

One of our chief needs as creative beings is support. Unfortunately, this can be hard to come by. Ideally, we would be nurtured and encourages first by our nuclear family and then by ever-widening circles of friends, teachers, well-wishers. As young artists, we need and want to be acknowledged for our attempts and efforts as well as for our achievements and triumphs. Unfortunately, many artists never receive this critical early encouragement. As a result, they may not know they are artists at all.

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

I was being an artist, being sensitive and technical as artists are. I'm sure Leonardo Da Vinci did that. Artists don't always feel the same as others feel about their work.

I've noticed a lot of younger artists have less fear of doing different sorts of things, whether it's various types of music, or gallery artists moving between video and sculpture and drawing.

Artists have their existential questions as human beings, and they address these questions in their works. But they are also thinking in a broader sense when they participate in a social and political debate through their works. Often the most important voices of artists in the political and the social debate are focused on originality in their works. We can see this in historical pieces, like "Guernica" by Picasso. "Guernica" was an extremely important manifestation and critique against war, but it was important and powerful because it was also an incredibly original and powerful work of art.

I've always felt that most jazz artists don't need producers .. most jazz artists know what kind of sound they want. They don't need a producer to come in there and tell them, "Oh, I think you should do this." I've always found it very strange that there's been such a thing as producers in jazz.

The movies today are too rich to have any room for genuine artists. They produce a few passable craftsmen, but no artists. Can you imagine a Beethoven making $100, 000 a year?

Artists are just entrepreneurs. It's up to them to figure out how or if they can make a monetary profit from their passion − from their calling, as I discussed above. Sometimes they can. Musicians can sell music, even in the face of piracy. Or they can sell their services − concerts, etc. Painters and other artists can profit in similar ways. A novelist could use kickstarter for a sequel or get paid to consult on a movie version.

I think the four land artists I showed all worked within a few years of each other. And they were standard bearers, I suppose, for land art. They each did very separate things. Apparently, later in California, a lot of artists started working in that medium and there was something of a rush of earthworks. But I wasn't involved with that.

To be able to make decisions and see them come to fruition and feel the excitement around them, what it generates within the company, how the artists get motivated — that's the most rewarding part; feeling I can be a catalyst for an artistic experience for our artists and for the public.

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.

I think that what most artists are trying to do is trying to understand. I think what distinguishes creative people and/or artists from another type of person is perhaps a willingness to go headlong into that uncertainty.

Artists recognize other artists as soon as the pencil begins to move.

Actors in any capacity, artists of any stripe, are inspired by their curiosity, by their desire to explore all quarters of life, in light and in dark, and reflect what they find in their work. Artists instinctively want to reflect humanity, their own and each other's, in all its intermittent virtue and vitality, frailty and fallibility.

Bernard [Leach] knew Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Terry Frost, Peter Lanyon, Johnny Wells. I can think of a number of people that we met there just because we were living with Bernard. Some of them became our friends, particularly the younger artists, but we were privileged to at least meet and talk with the older artists also. And they would come to dinner, and we would simply be included in the conversation, which was quite fascinating.

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.

An artists job is to see. And to go out in the world and see it firsthand, just as it is; to report with line and words what is seen. To be in the world, not just study about the world, that is the artists task

We don't necessarily need so many artists. I recommend that many of the people who think they want to be artists should go into the American Friends Service Committee, or do government outreach to communities that don't have water, or that need seeds or ecological assistance. It would create a system in which people with engaged sensibilities and potential insight assist instead of imposing. I think it could leap right out of the art world into wonderful community action.

I helped found Artists for New South Africa, but it used to be called Artists for Free South Africa. Alfre Woodard and a bunch of us started this.

I get a great laugh from artists who ridicule the critics as parasites and artists manqués — sucha horrible joke. I can’t imagine a more perfect art form, a moreperfect career than criticism. I can’t imagine anything more valuableto do.

Many of us believe that 'real artists' do not experience self-doubt. In truth, artists are people who have learned to live with doubt and do the work anyway.

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.

I don't have any sympathy for the subject matter, [but] I have great respect for rap artists. In fact, not for the rap artists, but the people who make the music over which they rap. Rap music - the music itself is incredible - but [the people that make the music] are hardly ever credited.

A lot of artists are much more concerned about how their work is used and how it's disseminated. That, to artists, is as important as the money, for some people.

All artists are entrepreneurs. All entrepreneurs are artists.

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.

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.

There's a lot of variety of musicians in Korea. I cannot say they are the best in the world, but I can say that Korean artists are really dynamic artists, so I am going to show that from now on.

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."

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.

The problem of making artists talk about their work is that when they're making their work the left-brain is shut off. So if you talk to an artist about it, you're talking to someone who wasn't there. It's hopeless. And also it's insulting. It's implying that the work is not an adequate account of itself. To me, the greatest artists are almost entirely non-verbal.

Not to say people shouldn't get rich from art. I adore the alchemy wherein artists who cast a complex spell make rich people give them their money. (Just writing it makes me cackle.) But too many artists have been making money without magic.

The artistic temperament is a disease that affects amateurs. Artists of a large and wholesome vitality get rid of their art easily, as they breathe easily or perspire easily. But in artists of less force, the thing becomes a pressure, and produces a definite pain, which is called the artistic temperament.

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.

Mixtapes are extremely important, especially for New York or North East artists. They allow you to be creative, to get feedback and criticism, but most of all, it gets your name out there. I would say about 90-100% of my success was down to the mixtapes.

If the affairs of the world were put in the hands of the screwball artists, it couldn’t be in a worse state than it is now !

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.

You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment.

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.

Hurry ruins saints as well as artists.

But you know, we have more hits than you can possibly think about. One of my personal favorite artists is the wonderful artist named Cher. And although I love much of her late stuff, her early stuff was the stuff that I really, really loved.

There was a time when television was sort of frowned upon among people who wanted to be serious artists. John Travolta kind of exploded that. He was one of the actors who made that go away.

I'm one of the artists that even though I love my soulful stuff, I love to turn up and have a good time and that's another side of me. As long as it doesn't veer away from who I am, I'm down with it.