Quotes About Artists

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.

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.

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.

With success it's like 60% talent, maybe 20% luck and then 20% being at the right place at the right time. There are so many artists that have been passed by - even though, on paper, they're the most incredibly talented artists, they don't have the social skills to take it outside of the bedroom.

You know, I didn't write my books for critics and scholars. I wrote them for students and artists. When I hear how much my work has meant to them--well, I can't tell you how happy that makes me. That means that this great stuff of myth, which I have been so privileged to work with, will be kept alive for a whole new generation. That's the function of the artists, you know, to reinterpret the old stories and make them come alive again, in poetry, painting, and now in movies.

I don't know any artists or painters, like, "Oh that painting group." I want to write down this idea of a group of artists who treat it like a band. Like, "Who made the painting?" "All four of us did."

Well, Daddy, I used to believe that artists went crazy in the process of creating the beautiful works of art that kept society sane. Nowadays, though, artists make intentionally ugly art that’s only supposed to reflect society rather than inspire it. So I guess we’re all loony together now, loony rats in the shithouse of commercialism.

What's happening in the larger world always influences art. When I first started the gallery in 1959, one of the first things I learned was that most people assume artists know one thing and one thing only - that they were idiot savants. I found very quickly that most artists were very informed and very aware of what was happening in the world around them. So all of those things go together, especially for earthworks. And at that time there was such an intense interest in American art. So there was a great deal of attention paid to where it was going.

Artists don't need criticism, artists need love

Art is a high calling - fears are coincidental. Coincidental, sneaky and disruptive, we might add, disguising themselves variously as laziness, resistance to deadlines, irritation with materials or surroundings, distraction over the achievements of others - indeed as anything that keeps you from giving your work your best shot. What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't, quit.

The most important thing to do as an artist is to get out of your comfort zone and work with different people: people who can't read a note of music, people who have incredible classical skills, blues and jazz musicians, pop artists, visual artists, dancers and actors. Learn from people who are creative in a different way to you and you'll keep evolving.

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.

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.

I really feel that artists or musicians are controversial people. Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. If people are not doing that, they're not artists - they're artisans.

Artists don't make objects. Artists make mythologies.

Elvis might have compromised his musical style a bit towards the end, but that doesn't mean that artists from the rock n' roll/folk-roots culture - of which he was not really a part - shouldn't get better as they get older, like the great jazz or blues artists.

I feel like because black Cuban artists don't have the kind of pressure to thematize race in the way that African-American artists do, there's more space for them to do their art without having to discuss it in terms of racial identity.

The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular 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 like to work with artists from around the world. There are so many new inspiring filmmakers. I had the privilege recently to work with Ethiopian filmmaker Zeresenay Mehari and his wife on the film Difret. They are that unique balance of very thoughtful conscious filmmakers who are also brilliant, original artists.

I would have conversations with European artists. Meaning, people look at my painting and one person would say, "Oh, your painting is just like so-and-so!" Another person would say, "It's just like so-and-so." But at the end, it's a chain of relay like a marathon. There are so many so-and-so's that eventually it becomes mine. My dialogue was completely European, with the '40s, '50s, '60s artists, but on the exterior side I do big painting. It's post-Pollock. It's current. It's a meeting of the time. The Chinese side just comes out.

The art I like concentrates on the body. I don't have a feel for Poussin, but for Courbet, Velásquez - artists who get to the flesh. Visceral artists - Bacon, Freud. And de Kooning, of course. He's really my man. He doesn't depict anything, yet it's more than representation, it's about the meaning of existence and pushing the medium of paint.

I just sit at the drawing board most of the time. I am used to talking to people. I love going to conventions, getting feedback and talking to people. Some artists don't. Some artists sit at their drawing board because their personality actually dictates that.

Trying to make your own sound is hard. When I was producing for other artists, I could just produce and write songs as a normal songwriter, and almost make them generic. The artists themselves, whoever is singing that song, can put their own twist on it. When it came to my own material, I had to really dig deep, because I was just writing generic stuff. It sounded like everybody else, like Justin Timberlake, like Usher. I never wanted to sound like someone, that's when you know it's not going to work.

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.

It is the job of artists to open doors and invite in prophesies, the unknown, the unfamiliar; it’s where their work comes from, although its arrival signals the beginning of the long disciplined process of making it their own. Scientists too, as J. Robert Oppenheimer once remarked, ‘live always at the ‘edge of mystery’­—the boundary of the unknown.’ But they transform the unknown into the known, haul it in like fishermen; artists get you out into that dark sea.

The artists always reflect the times, so there's a lot to think about, a lot of unknowns, a lot of things that are describable. This is the closest I've seen to the kind of ambience that made the '60s happen. It's not about the artist having a responsibility to do anything. They have to be artists and express themselves and everything will work out fine.

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.

People mistakenly think that art is about nature, or about an artists feelings about nature. It is instead a path of enlightenment and pleasure, one of many paths, where nature and the artists feelings are merely raw material.

Artists working for other artists is all about knowing, learning, unlearning, initiating long-term artistic dialogues, making connections, creating covens, and getting temporary shelter from the storm.

Most people just want to be part of the world, they want to live, love, and enjoy themselves - to take part in the world around them. Whereas artists are always retreating, locking the door, and inventing other worlds.

Artists are the traditional interpreters of dreams and nightmares.

There are many readers of the book, who don't know anything about the authors and the artists. There is more than one author. It doesn't matter, if you can't make the reader dive into the story and surround him with that environment and those characters. That's an experience that lasts longer than figuring out who did what. I think that's what makes our working relationship better, it helps us to make a book that feels unique and not like different voices.

Artists of many diverse types began using simple forms to their own ends.

If the goal is to get the best artists, actors, and filmmakers in the world to create the best movies, Hollywood does a decent job. And I think no one would disagree with me that it also makes a ton of bad movies and employs a bunch of hacks.

Most artists are making as much money now as they could have made... in the heyday of Def Jam [when the] Beastie Boys would sell 10 million records or DMX would sell 6 or 7 million records. Those records are one thing, but then all the other ways to exploit the emotional relationship between artist and community is so much greater that I would guess that they're making as much or more money than they could have ever made.

Artists live with God – but give their little finger to Satan. I sleep with the angels and dream of the devil.

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.

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.

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.

I tried to just do things like make some money, be responsible, help out other artists who I see have had a similar path.

Artists shouldn't be made famous. They have this huge aura of almost god-like quality about them, just because their craft makes a lot of money. And at the same time it is a forced importance... It is man-made so the press can feed off it.

The greatest scientists are artists as well.

People like Howlin' Wolf, Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, John Lee Hooker, Nina Simone, Captain Beefheart - all of these artists were what I grew up listening to every day of my life. And there's a very healthy music scene in the west country of England, where I grew up.

Artists are the radical voice of civilization.

Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.

This idea of the body as a feast, it stems from Giuseppe Arcimboldo, moves to Viennese artists like Günter Brus, and then you have Salvador Dalí of course, then much later, Marina Abramović and Ulay, with their nude series in Italy. It's an ongoing conversation. There was nothing cruel about Méret's Oppenheim piece.

If sometimes our great artists have been the most critical of our society, it is because their sensitivity and their concern for justice, which must motivate any true artist, makes him aware that our nation falls short of its highest potential. I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than full recognition of the place of the artist.