Quotes About Artists

I've worked with jazz artists, country artists, classical artists, pop artists. I never wanted there to be categories, because when I was a kid there weren't.

I think the entrepreneurial activities that make art visible and attractive are what lure people into the amusement park that SoHo has become or that Bushwick or Williamsburg has become. It's not that outsiders come to an area because they hear artists are living there. A lot of people came who were not that interested in living with artists, but they were interested in living like artists and socializing the way that they thought artists socialized.

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.

The artist is the lowest form of life on the rung of the ladder. The publishers are usually businessmen who deal with businessmen. They deal with promotional people. They deal with financial people. They deal with accountants. They deal with people who work on higher levels. They deal with tax people, but have absolutely no interest in artists, in individual artists, especially very young artists.

In a way, I envy the freedom artists have. Artists can push themselves beyond their limits, in pursuit of their ideas and their vision, even if they are inhabited by demons that can also play tricks on them.

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.

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.

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 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.

I really admire artists who take the time to recharge their batteries and not continually call on it. I think you can spot tired and jaded artists quite quickly.

It is not the job of artists to give the audience what the audience want. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artist. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need

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

Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.

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.

There are female artists I can look at that I find more in common with than the male artists, because they're blending the pop, dance and theatricality... but currently there aren't a lot of guys who go there.

There are 100,000 artists on Pandora & 70% are indies; artists making $100K - $2 million.

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

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.

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.

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.

What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artist who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances.

Laborers want their kids to be merchants or business people. Business people want their kids to be professionals. Professionals want their kids to be academics, professors. Academics want their kids to be artists. And artists don't care if their kids are laborers or not. They can be anything.

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.

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.

Designers + artists see potential in things where others do not. I think artists in many ways are the original entrepreneurs.

Many artists stick to making and hire a manager to focus on their business. Artists that build websites and mobile apps can do that, too.

I've collaborated with artists that truly run the gamut: from members of the Wu Tang Clan and Capone, to Moby, Lady Gaga, and opening for artists such as Sheryl Crow, Jack White, and Chris Shiflett of the Foo Fighters, etc.

Artists must be sacrificed to their art.

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.

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.

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 !

Even though Hubbard is dead, his business still repeats his lies, ... and in my opinion the proposed Act should also punish businesses and organizations that repeat such falsehoods. It is a gross insult to American men and women who have actually been wounded and who have actually earned the medals and awards that frauds and con-artists falsely claim.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

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.

The number of contemporary artists who appeal to me is infinitesimal.

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.

The greatest scientists are artists as well.

Now I'm a symbol of what to be and how hard to work. I have heads of major labels say, "I wish you could teach our artists how to do it." At one point I was the punching bag of what not to be, and now I'm the model of what to be.

A lot of times, when a band finds success with a certain style or sound, they have a really hard time breaking away from that to grow as artists.

I started off just trying to make a wish list for myself. I wanted to work with people I really admire myself. I wanted to work with other artists from other scenes so they could make my songs improve in a different way - people who have artistically different things to say.

Re-creative artists are investigators.

I've known the glory of the stage and the glory of the spotlight. I still crave it. I want to be on 'American Bandstand' and 'Soul Train' as a solo artist. As a producer, songwriter and arranger, I help other artists say what they want to say. But on my records, I say what I want to say.

An occupation that has no basis in sex-determined gifts can now recruit its ranks from twice as many potential artists.

If people want insights, if they want to swim in the currents of their own time and share the experiences of their time, then it makes sense to engage with the artists of one's own time.

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.

I think that we have a unique opportunity as performers and artists to be kind of the town criers and also to get more people to listen, so that's a blessing and a responsibility that I take very seriously.

The fans get to see you, and you can do great by your record if you have a great performance or a great night there. That's all part of the business. But at their core, awards shows are not really a sincere thing. For a lot of years, the artists had to pay to play their own set.

The invention of photography has dealt a mortal blow to the old modes of expression, in painting as well as in poetry, where automatic writing, which appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, is a true photography of thought. Since a blind instrument now assured artists of achieving the aim they had set themselves up to that time, they now aspired, not without recklessness, to break with the imitation of appearances.