Artist Quotes · Page 431

Art is mainly about wrestling with material reality, not striving after a spiritual ideal.

— Calvin Seerveld

You turn your life into a work of art in order to redeem the ordinariness - a condition you are stuck with.

— Robert Dessaix

There will always be those who want to make paintings of the human form with all its parts all where they should…

— Philip Pearlstein

An artist who is too self-centered is liable to exhibit faults he abhors: carelessness, callousness, and even downright cruelty.

— Eric Maisel

The arts must study their occasions; they must stand modestly aside until they can slip in fitly into the interstices of life.

— George Santayana

The artist finds a greater pleasure in painting than in having completed the picture.

— Seneca the Younger

Ideas aren't real estate, they grow collectively and that knocks out the egotistical loneliness that generally infects art.

— Robert Redford

Abstract art is a fundamental distrust of the theory of reality concocted by the eyes.

— Robert Breault

Nobody else was saying what he said on air, and sometimes he pushed the envelope when he said the newest Jay Z…

— Freddie Gibbs

...assume that art begins in unhappiness. True, the goal of art is to convey a vision of coherence and peace, but the…

— Robert Adams

“The philosophical study of beauty, art, and the splendor of nature nurtures a person’s fertile mind by exposing a person to the…

— Kilroy J. Oldster

The young artist... will discover out of ordinary things the meaning of ordinariness. He will not try to make them extraordinary. Only…

— Allan Kaprow

I am more likely to get paid for my art if it's presented alongside a white artist, so the questions around value…

— Vivek Shraya

Any great artist is wrestling with their sadness and loneliness, their fears, anxieties and securities, and they're transfiguring those into complicated forms…

— Cornel West

I discovered that what's really important for a creator isn't what we vaguely define as inspiration or even what it is we…

— Federico Fellini

Take a bunch of little kids to the beach and they all make art. Adults are too stupid to call it art,…

— Buffy Sainte-Marie

As a mature character artist I thoroughly enjoyed working with the enthusiastic, childlike Salman Khan.

— Vinod Khanna

Should it not be remembered that in setting a garden we are painting a picture?

— Beatrix Farrand

“A person may paint or talk about painting but he cannot do both at the same time.”

— Irving Stone

To be an artist — actually, to be a human being in these times — it’s all difficult. … What matters is…

— Patti Smith

The artist uses the talent he has, wishing he had more talent. The talent uses the artist it has, wishing it had…

— Anonymous

I think basically I'm a painter, but I would use anything to make my point.

— Julian Schnabel

Art that only comes from the head isn't any good. Watch any good musician and you'll see what I mean.

— Austin Kleon

Visuals are as artistic as sounds, so being serious about both isn't a contradiction to me.

— Dee Dee Ramone

Well, in any art there are a lot of technical things that you can get to like.

— Donald Judd

The Civil Rights for Musicians Act is about economic justice for African American artists. It's about what's right. And it's about time.

— Dionne Warwick

“The artist’s secret lies in fear and awe. Our times have turned them into terror and dismay.”

— Hugo Ball

Art is only worth what people will pay for it. Artists do not get paid by the hour.

— Jack White

Without craft, art remains private. Without art, craft is merely hackwork.

— Joyce Carol Oates

Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

— Chuck Close

“An artist is a nourisher and a creator who knows that during the act of creation there is collaboration. We do not…

— Madeleine L'Engle

I've collected John Ward pieces for years. Ward represents ideas of nature and of sediments.

— Jonathan Anderson

The quality of a painter depends on the amount of past he carries with him.

— Pablo Picasso

To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

— Jasper Johns

There's a lot of ambiguity in life, and so often, our art is very neatly wrapped up at the end, when our…

— Carrie Coon

“Art needs motives that are more profound than profit if it is to maintain its difference from—and position above—other cultural forms.”

— Sarah Thornton

To end up with a canvas that is no less beautiful than the empty canvas is to begin with.

— Robert Motherwell

A painter knows what to do by the tug of the brush as it pulls through a mixture of oils, and by…

— James Elkins

I really enjoy squeezing out a big lump of paint directly onto the canvas and leaving it; fresh, immediate and sometimes shocking.

— John Dyer

What art is, in reality, is this missing link, not the links which exist. It's not what you see that is art;…

— Marcel Duchamp