quotations about artists
This generation of artists are much more interested in investigating the textures and fabrics of the system we are actually under, rather than presenting nostalgic alternatives that are outdated or unrealistic. It is about occupying the worlds of technology and the corporate world, getting close to them and their people.
SIMON DENNY
"Where have all the art punks gone?", The Guardian, March 16, 2016
To an artist, creating an image means being in love with it.
YEVGENY ZAMYATIN
The Psychology of Creative Work
For more than 100 years, art has been defined by rebellion. From the surrealists' rejection of the rational to the political paintings of Picasso, from the rage of the punks to the sly irony of the YBAs, the work that adorns the walls of our art institutions is overwhelmingly countercultural. So what happened with millennials? Where is their rebellious spirit? Why, as Gregor Muir of the Institute of Contemporary Art asked recently, have they yet to produce an avant garde movement? Where are the revolutionary artists rattling the bars?
HANNAH ELLIS-PETERSON
"Where have all the art punks gone?", The Guardian, March 16, 2016
The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for a living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Man and Superman
When an artist is living month to month, scraping by, maybe it's harder to be high-minded and retain your vision and artistic integrity while trying to pay the bills.
ADAM WATTS
interview, "Adam Watts On Art, Commerce, New Album", Hypebot, March 29, 2016
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.
OSCAR WILDE
The Decay of Lying
Over the years, a wide variety of artists have been able to establish themselves as leaders in their respective fields. Many of these artists were initially ridiculed, since their works were original and broke the traditions, which were set before them. This is especially true, when it comes to some of the old masters and those from the abstract art genre. Today, the diversity of artists is wider and more dynamic than ever before. In fact, artists are revamping all aspects of art, including their mediums, tools and supplies.
REHAN HASAN
"New Artists Emerge And Their Works Are Unlike Anything You've Ever Seen Before", The Examiner, March 25, 2016
My role in society, or any artist or poet's role, is to try and 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.
JOHN LENNON
interview, KFRC RKO Radio, December 8, 1980
This is what real artists do, they challenge themselves in a way that leaves them vulnerable but also creates the opportunity of rediscovery.
NICHOLAS LAROUSSE
"An Artist's Way: In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri", Everyday eBook, March 2, 2016
Turns out what they say about artists with big signatures is true -- literally writing your name bigger correlates with becoming a bigger name yourself.... A one standard deviation increase in narcissism increases the market price by 16 percent and both the highest and lowest auction-house estimates by about 19 percent.
PRISCILLA FRANK
"Narcissists Make Better Artists, Study Says, Surprising No One", Huffington Post, March 23, 2016
It is an abnormal thing to want to be an artist, to practice an art. It is comparatively normal to practice an interpretative art. But to actually make things up is not something that, well, usually runs in families or is the recommendation of a career master.
JULIAN BARNES
interview, The Paris Review, winter 2000
The artist, and particularly the poet, is always an anarchist in the best sense of the word. He must heed only the call that arises within him from three strong voices: the voice of death, with all its foreboding, the voice of love, and the voice of art.
FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA
attributed, Lorca: A Dream of Life
The root problem with the bloated image of the artist that haunts modernity, I suggest, is not the way the artist is being pictured but the model of divine transcendence that feeds it (and which in turn is fed by it). What kind of deity lurks there?
JEREMY BEGBIE
Redeeming Transcendence in the Arts
Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul, and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.
LEO TOLSTOY
diary
In every artist we can perceive a man with both a message and a method. His message may be innate in him, but his method he has to acquire from others.
BRANDER MATTHEWS
The Principles of Playmaking
The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.
OSCAR WILDE
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Why should an artist's way of looking at the world have any meaning for us? Why does it give us pleasure? Because, I believe, it increases our awareness of our own potentiality.
JOHN BERGER
Selected Essays of John Berger
To desire to be an artist is to desire to be a complete man in respect to some one function, to realize yourself utterly. A man is a poor thing who is content not to be an artist.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY
Life and the Student
The artist labors while he may,
But finds at best too brief the day;
And, tho' his works outlast the time
And nation that they make sublime,
He feels and sees that Nature knows
Nothing of time in what she does,
But has a leisure infinite
Wherein to do her work aright.
HENRY ABBEY
"Along the Nile"
An artist has to stick true to their own beliefs and be a pioneer. They're not necessarily pleasing a studio or a government or anybody else but just being honest and raw and expressing themselves in a beautiful way. That's not always what people want to hear or expect to see.
PAMELA ANDERSON
interview, Parade Magazine, January 23, 2015