Artists Quotes - Page 9

I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?

Everybody says they want artists to make money and then when they do, everybody hates them for it. The word sellout is spit out by the bitterest, smallest parts of ourselves. Don't be one of those horrible fans who stops listening to your favorite band just because they have a hit single. Don't write off your friends because they've had a little bit of success. Don't be jealous when the people you like do well - celebrate their victory as if it's your own.

If you're to explain your works, then surely you have chosen wrong audience!

Fueled by my inspiration, I ran across the room to steal the cup of coffee the bookshelf had taken prisoner. Lapping the black watery brew like a hyena, I tossed the empty cup aside. I then returned to the chair to continue my divine act of creation. Hot blood swished in my head as my mighty pen stole across the page.

Artists are the serfs of a leisure society.

Show me a person who found love in his life and did not celebrate it with a dance.

When I was young and I was forced to watch Disney films, I would fast forward the good guys, wasn't interested in princes and princesses, only by the villains.

...it’s just another one of those things I don’t understand: everyone impresses upon you how unique you are, encouraging you to cultivate your individuality while at the same time trying to squish you and everyone else into the same ridiculous mould. It’s an artist’s right to rebel against the world’s stupidity.

In children's art class we sat in a ring of kindergarten chairs and drew three daffodils that had just been picked out of the yard; and while I was drawing, my sharpened yellow pencil and the cup of the yellow daffodil gave off wiffs just alike. That the pencil doing the drawing should give off the same smell of the flower it drew seemed part of the art lesson - as shouldn't it be? Children, like animals use all their sense to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way, all over again. Here and there, it's the same world. Or now and then we'll hear from an artist who's never lost it.

Dance as the narration of a magical story; that recites on lips, illuminates imaginations and embraces the most sacred depths of souls.

That is an artist as I love artists, modest in his needs: he really wants only two things, his bread and his art - panem et Circen.

It's a good thing you and your pills weren't around a few hundred years ago or there never would have been a Vermeer or a Caravaggio. You'd have drugged "Girl with a Pearl Earring" and "The Taking of Christ" right the hell out of them.

The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails

It seems obvious, looking back, that the artists of Weimar Germany and Leninist Russia lived in a much more attenuated landscape of media than ours, and their reward was that they could still believe, in good faith and without bombast, that art could morally influence the world. Today, the idea has largely been dismissed, as it must in a mass media society where art's principal social role is to be investment capital, or, in the simplest way, bullion. We still have political art, but we have no effective political art. An artist must be famous to be heard, but as he acquires fame, so his work accumulates 'value' and becomes, ipso-facto, harmless. As far as today's politics is concerned, most art aspires to the condition of Muzak. It provides the background hum for power.

Art is a distinct form of human communication. Art interprets experience, sensation, and feelings. An artistic work translates our mental images and allows other people to understand what we feel; art conveys our happiness, sadness, hopes, doubts, anxieties, fears, desires, and ineffable longings.

As useful as an unhappy artist. As useless as a happy philosopher.

We are told that in translation there is no such thing as equivalence. Many times the translator reaches a fork in the translating road where they must make a choice in the interpretation of a word. And each time they make one of these choices, they are taken further from the truth. But what we aren’t told is that this isn’t a shortcoming of translation; it’s a shortcoming of language itself. As soon as we try to put reality into words, we limit it. Words are not reality, they are the cause of reality, and thus reality is always more. Writers aren't alchemists who transmute words into the aurous essence of the human experience. No, they are glassmakers. They create a work of art that enables us to see inside to help us understand. And if they are really good, we can see our own reflections staring back at us.

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

Royal Young has accomplished a rare feat in his fresh and riveting debut: he manages to recount his fascinating youth and unconventional family with a mixture of humor, scathing honesty and tenderness. Much more than simply a book about a kid who dreams of stardom, Fame Shark is a thoughtful, hilarious and moving love letter to his family and the Lower East Side of New York City.

I am not an adventurer by choice but by fate.

The notion of making money by popular work, and then retiring to do good work, is the most familiar of all the devil's traps for artists.

I've been told my old city possesses a 'thriving arts scene,' whatever that is; personally, I think artists should lie low and stick to their work, not line-dance through the parks.

Art is the medium through which you express the inexpressible, convey the unconveyable, transporting the audience in different realms of existence erasing their mental identities. Any effort by the artist to make an personal identity is detrimental in an artistic sense. Be Wiser, leave no residue, dissolve in ART!

When a poet digs himself into a hole, he doesn't climb out. He digs deeper, enjoys the scenery, and comes out the other side enlightened.

I paint the stuff I see when my eyes are closed

creativity keeps the world alive, yet, everyday we are asked to be ashamed of honoring it, wanting to live our lives as artists. i’ve carried the shame of being a ‘creative’ since i came to the planet; have been asked to be something different, more, less my whole life. thank spirit, my wisdom is deeper than my shame, and i listened to who i was. i want to say to all the creatives who have been taught to believe who you are is not enough for this world, taught that a life of art will amount to nothing, know that who we are, and what we do is life. when we create, we are creating the world. remember this, and commit.

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

Art symbolizes our perfect ability in the matter of enriching the reality!

Some artists benefit less from being interviewed than they do from being left alone.

In this world, this life, "flow" [the times when our work or play so absorbs and attunes our energies that we lose track of time] comes to an end. The canvas is dry, the fugue is complete, the band plays the tag one more time and then resolves on the final chord. And, too, the book is finished, the service is over, the lights go up in the darkened theater and we emerge blinking into the bright lights of the "real world." But what if the timeless, creative world we had glimpsed is really the real world -- and it is precisely its reality that gave it such power to captivate us for a while? What if our ultimate destiny is that moment of enjoyment and engagement we glimpse in the artist's studio?

A magician with decreasing practice sessions will give defective performances.

But sometimes, talent isn't worth shit. There are tons of talentless people out there making zillions of dollars. And unfortunately, an equal number of brilliant artists whose name and voices you'll never hear. - Paul Hudson

All forms of madness, bizarre habits, awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, are justified in the person who creates good art.

My collage opens my heart to endless joy. I am an artist!

People who have a creative side and do not live it out are most disagreeable clients. They make a mountain out of a molehill, fuss about unnecessary things, are too passionately in love with somebody who is not worth so much attention, and so on. There is a kind of floating charge of energy in them which is not attached to its right object and therefore tends to apply exaggerated dynamism to the wrong situation.

Look, I don't see why bad artists - I mean artists who are obviously incompetent... - why they should be presented hypocritically as good artists just because they're supposed to be advancing the frontiers of freedom of expression or... ...demonstrating that there should be no limit on subject matter.

If an artist wants to be original, he should not look to art for inspiration, for art seeks its model in life, not art—and only life is rich enough to simulate originality.

If movements were a spark every dancer would desire to light up in flames.

Success or Failure, there should always be a Drive to Keep on Creating.

Any local music scene at any point in time can be referred to as derivative of more well-known acts. The line separating influence from imitation is a blurry one. Very few artists are completely original; even great artists build upon what has occurred before, and add their personality and talent to create their own original expression.

He said, "Yeah, well, artists are a lot like gangsters. They both know that the official version, the one everyone else believes, is a lie.

Dance is the ritual of immortality.

Bless the poets, the workers for justice, the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache, the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning—We will all make it through, despite politics and wars, despite failures and misunderstandings. There is only love.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and everyone will have their own interpretation.

Cherish your own emotions and never under-value them. We are not here to do what has already been done.

The sound a box of Lego makes is the noise of a child's mind working, looking for the right piece. Shake it, and it's almost creativity in aural form.

Communication is not using beautiful and complex words to impress, but its all about expressing our truest emotions using simple words!

DANCE – Defeat All Negativity (via) Creative Expression.

I love widely and deeply, the Naive sense of Primitivism I manage to project in my Art. It always gives me a sense that it is not developed or derived from anything else, and it is unaffected by objective reasoning. Very similar to my nomadic life.

Before, I could only guess oh who I was. Now, thanks to my art, I know who I am.

...As an artist, you need the naysayers and the nonbelievers to add fuel to your creative fire.

As a general rule, in the world of magic, the most successful magician is the one who has enough patience to keep the secrets of his original magic effects.

The artist, to my way of thinking, is a monstrosity, something outside nature.

Dignity is not a symbol bestowed on man, nor does the word itself possess force. Man's dignity is a force and the only modus vivendi by which man and his history survive. When mid-twentieth century Germany did not let man live and die with this right, man became an animal. No matter how technologically advanced or sophisticated, when man negates this divine right, he not only becomes self-destructive, but castrates his history and poisons our future. This is what 'The Nazi Drawings' are about.

And remember whatever discipline you're in, whether you're a musician or a photographer, fine artist or a cartoonist, writer, a dancer, a singer, a designer... whatever you do, you have a thing that's unique. You have the ability to make art.

Purses are dreamt up by artists, not architects.

An artist is one who has mastered the art of dissolving himself so completely that only his work remains!

The idea that any art is achieved 'intuitively' is a dehumanization of the brains, effort, and the traditions of the artist, and a classification of said artist as subhuman. It is those supposed incapable of intelligence, training, or connection with a tradition who are described as working by instinct or intuition.

Stop teasing you two,” Suzy jumped in, “not all of Kathy’s ideas are wacky.”“Gee thanks. Was that supposed to be a compliment?

Sometimes people can be negative, especially about my confidence. I trust myself, I refuse to obey, and I noticed there is a need to punish me for it. But haters are important because they show you you're doing something right. I'm scared of unanimity, artists who everybody likes. When you speak your mind and you're loud, you will attract negativity. But I have thick skin, I think the fact that I was severely bullied in my childhood helped me build strength and believe in my artistic vision. I deal with rejection very well. I have a lifelong vision and an unbreakable spirit.