Quotes About Artists

Now, [hip-hop/grime artists] Stormzy, Skepta, or the Section Boyz have to be validated by Drake, Rihanna or Beyoncé. They're rolled into this one urban culture bubble; it's not really to do with, "I'm specifically f - ked off about my country and what's going on in my town." We're very much only showing success to artists who impress American artists, and I'm one of them.

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.

There is a good deal of art that in some traditions of conceptual work are anti-affect, in fact a very large chunk of mainstream art after 1950 took against affect art altogether because they said, "No, we hate affect art because this is how we get manipulated by totalitarianism and therefore artists shouldn't play that game." And a lot of artists agreed to play that game, which I personally believe is to the loss of art.

I have been influenced by many different artists at many different stages of my life. Starting out, it was people like Elton John, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and Fiona Apple. As I got older I got deeper into the work of bands like the Beatles, artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Etta James, and Joni Mitchell.

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

I think the defect actually lies with male artists. Male artists often border on idiocy, while it's important for a woman not to be that way, if possible. Women are outstanding in science, just as good as men.

Actually, I don't think there's anyone that represents the artists, except the artists themselves.

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?

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.

My greatest passion has always been connecting with creative people, appreciating the artistic and discovering fresh perspectives on the world. I came on board to use my experience in building an international community of photographers, illustrators and video artists at iStockphoto who learned, grew and sold their work to millions around the world. Building a community that large requires personality, a keen sense of what both the contributing artists and the buying audience need, and an ability to balance both. I wanted very much to transfer those skills to the fine art world.

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.

I paved the way for a lot of white artists now that don’t have to deal with the stigma of being a white artist. I don’t think that people would be as open for non-African American artists like that if it I didn’t take a lot of the slack for them.

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.

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 artists who want to be writers, read the reviews; the artists who want to write, don't.

Some artists are told what to like and told definitions of what the music business is. That's a problem. Music is artistry, and you want your music heard, your act known. But artists don't know. They are ignorant the minute they sign a contract.

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.

I think artists like Justin Bieber really opened up a door for younger artists to be respected in the industry. I really like what he did.

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.

Artists try to ask questions, and within our society, unless there are artists, those questions don't get asked. And everybody blames the market.

Abstract expression is so solid, so successful and recognizable, but there's a mystery about the artists that goes into it, a fetishism about the artists themselves and who they were.

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

Norman Rockwell spent his career painting pictures that helped people understand their own feelings...pictures that enriched their own experiences and celebrated their own lives. But the art establishment branded him an 'illustrator', a sentimental one at that. Real artists, they said were doing art for art's sake, not for the sake of the bourgeois public. Real artists were putting swiggles, smears or daubs of paint on the canvas. They were doing 'innovative' and 'creative' work. If they were hideous and grotesque; we know that's what life really is!

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.

Back in the day, even if they were singing about the same things, each artist was unique. That's why I try to stay away from the big-name producers, so I can prove that it's not about the producer, it's about the artist. A lot of R&B artists have gotten away from being artists and are just chasing after the next hot producer and it all starts to sound the same.

There's something pleasing about large, well-lit spaces. I love that dealers are willing to take massive chances in order to give this much room to their artists. Most of all, I love that more galleries showing more art gives more artists a shot.

I think the role of artists in the past was very different. Artists had less responsibility in many ways.

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.

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.

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.

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

We all know artists who like to collaborate, who like to work as a team. It all kind of depends what your habitual working method is.

Now there are no priests or philosophers left, artists are the most important people in the world.

Contact with like-minded painters - a group means a great deal to me: nothing comes in isolation. We have worked out our ideas largely by talking them through. Shutting myself away in the country, for instance, would do nothing for me. One depends on one's surroundings. And so the exchange with other artists - and especially the collaboration with Lueg and Polke - matters a lot to me: it is part of the input that I need.

Modern music is people who can't think signing artists who can't write songs to make records for people who can't hear.

I'm constantly working on something new, whether it's a Garbage song, or for someone I'm producing or a song for film or TV whatever it is. I guess I'm sort of living in the moment and moving towards what I'm doing next. I think most artists are like that.

You know how it is to want something. Desire builds like a little house in your head and it sits there, half-constructed in your mind. Women who want children are this way. Artists are this way about pictures. It doesn't go away. You may forget for a few months but then it's back, the unfinished pieces of what you want.

This is the birth of the modern human soul. The artists are like us, not like the Neanderthals, who had no culture - and who incidentally were still roaming the landscape at the time the paintings were made. It is striking that there is a distant cultural echo that seems to reach all the way down to us, over dozens of millennia.

You should form your own opinions, and I think that's why social media is good because it's an alternative source of information that can help you form your opinion, that might not be your parents, and might not be what the media is trying to force down your throat. So that's why it's important for artists and musicians to speak up, because for those people who have an inkling that their parents' views aren't right or that their parents don't have any views or whatever, that's an alternative source of information that can help them form their own opinion.

The traditional model for a company like Coca-Cola is to hire one big advertising agency and essentially outsource all of its creativity in that area. But Coca-Cola does not do it that way. It knows how to manage creative people and creative teams and it has been quite adept at building a network that includes the Creative Artists Agency in Hollywood, which is a talent agency.

Mumford and Sons and Adele are both incredible artists and are great for popular music. There's a lot of club music with heavy beats, so to have that Mumford record and hear banjos being used is so cool.

Labels only confuse people. The smarter people recognize artists who transcend categories. But I always try to entertain. It's in my nature; writers are born to entertain. If that means working ostensibly within a genre, fine.

Why are millions spent on the war each day, while not a penny is available for ... artists or the poor? Why do people have to starve when mountians of food are rotting away in other parts of the world? Oh, why are people so crazy?

The artist is something of an outsider in America. I have always felt that America does not value its artists, certainly not in the sense that the Europeans do.