Artist Quotes · Page 414

“What can be sadder than a discouraged artist dying not from his own commonplace maladies, but from the cancer of oblivion?”

— Vladimir Nabokov

I kind of got popular as a spoken word artist, and I ended up doing some ads and audio stuff for Nike…

— Dante Basco

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness. I don't think an artist can ever be happy.

— Georges Simenon

A musicians or artists responsibility is a simple one, and that is, through your music to tell the truth.

— Tom Morello

People are predominant in my paintings. Although they are not obvious, you can feel their presence.

— Ralph Allen

Enough of Art. It's Art that kills us. People no longer want to do painting: they make art.

— Pablo Picasso

I'm an artist, but, as I get older, I really want to do philanthropic work and help people.

— Andie MacDowell

To be artist, and lover, that is the true goal, the only adequate objective, the divinely destined end for man.

— Bernard Iddings Bell

I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what…

— Claude Monet

“I know great art when someone doesn’t wash their hands after making it. And not only did Duchamp not wash his hands,…

— Jarod Kintz

Truth and sincerity have a certain distinguishing native lustre about them which cannot be perfectly counterfeited; they are like fire and flame,…

— Benjamin Franklin

“He was a bad painter and a vicious gossip, with a vocabulary composed almost entirely of obscenities, guttural verbs, and the word…

— Donna Tartt

The artistic impulse seems not to wish to produce finished work. It certainly deserts us half-way, after the idea is born; and…

— Clarence Day

We can hardly imagine a state of mind in which all material objects were regarded as symbols of spirtual truths or episodes…

— Kenneth Clark

As artists and traders in medieval cities began to form organizations, they instituted tough initiation ceremonies. Journeymen in Bergen, Norway, were shoved…

— Isaac Asimov

I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the…

— Marilyn Monroe

I wanted to be a poet and/or an artist, but I was very lazy (frightened of failure, I guess) and drank too…

— Peter Blegvad

I'm a mixed martial artist, if you think I'm going to take you down, I'm going to knock your out.

— Marlon Moraes

Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it?…

— Robert Adams

I am an artisan. I only became an artist when people watch what I do. That is when it becomes art.

— Rhys Ifans

The best thing about the term 'performance artist' is that it includes just about everything you might want to do.

— Laurie Anderson

The role of the painter . . . is to project that which sees itself in him.

— Max Ernst

A contemporary painting is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it and not a predetermined figure.

— Stuart Pearson Wright

Painting fulfills a need to be non-intellectual. There are times when we have to get our brains out in our fingers.

— Ray Bradbury

Passion is the very fuel of inspiration. Artists, of all people, must be willing to share their passions with the world.

— Carole Katchen

My opinion of art is that a man should have love for it, because my idea is that he paints from his…

— Horace Pippin

Obviously, there is pleasure in the execution of any sort of art, and using language, as Nabokov felt also, is an exquisite…

— Joyce Carol Oates

Artists are like messengers. A song is authored by you, but its interpretation is owned by other people. And you have no…

— Pharrell Williams

As an artist, where do you conjure these concepts? They come through you instead of through cognitive thought.

— Nick Littlemore

The subject matter of art is life, life as it actually is; but the function of art is to make life better.

— Gertrude Stein

“Not everyone with a painting brush is an artist, likewise not everyone with a camera is a photographer ”

— Ewlyn Fernando

Exaggerated passion combined with enthusiasm has the ingredients to make a prolific artist.

— Don Watson

Perfectionism is a mean, frozen form of idealism, while messes are the artist's true friend.

— Anne Lamott

“Because the essence of creativity is fucking around; art is that which is done for the hell of it.”

— Tim Kreider

“Creativity is a way of living life, no matter what our vocation, or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited…

— Madeleine L'Engle

Each single gesture of art must be daring. One must not be concerned with the side-effects.

— Toni Servillo

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

— Aristotle

Contrary to popular belief, all evolving artists are in a full time battle with mediocrity.

— Robert Genn

I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don't try to make them extraordinary. I just try to…

— Andy Warhol

All painting - the painting of the past as well as of the present - shows us that its essential plastic means…

— Piet Mondrian