Artist Quotes · Page 454

I always wanted to be an artist, but I didn't really know how someone could make a life out it.

— Julie Mehretu

We need art. We've been telling stories since the beginning. As human beings, we need it for our survival.

— Lili Taylor

Learning to draw is really a matter of learning to see - to see correctly - and that means a good deal…

— Kimon Nicolaides

Many artists have said that when life itself becomes fully conscious, art as we know it will vanish.

— Marilyn Ferguson

The truth of art keeps science from becoming inhuman, and the truth of science keeps art from becoming ridiculous.

— Raymond Chandler

Popularity is the crown of laurel which the world puts on bad art. Whatever is popular is wrong.

— Oscar Wilde

I deplore any action which denies artistic talent an opportunity to express itself because of prejudice against race origin.

— Bess Truman

My ultimate goal is to really be a huge music artist to the point where one day people forget that I was…

— Chanel West Coast

All of us use art and literature as an escape from time to time, but if it's any good, it has a…

— Katherine Paterson

A distinction is made between artists who work directly from nature and those who work purely from imagination. Neither if these methods…

— Henri Matisse

My father is an acupuncturist, and the way he practices is very free. For me, he's like an artist. He started to…

— Anna Mouglalis

The interesting thing about this is I don't know what my vision [ in Salome the play and Salomaybe] is yet about.…

— Al Pacino

“for I wish rather, in this lecture at least, to dwell on the effect that decorative art has on human life -…

— Oscar Wilde

In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists.…

— Aldous Huxley

Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch.…

— Richard Huelsenbeck

There is a crucial distinction to be made between innovation and originality. The second, unlike the first, can never break with what…

— Roger Scruton

Discipline in art is a fundamental struggle to understand oneself, as much as to understand what one is drawing.

— Henry Moore

We all name ourselves. We call ourselves artists. Nobody asks us. Nobody says you are or you aren't.

— Ad Reinhardt

Any artist will tell you that when they get negative criticism of their work, it's personally hurtful to them.

— Peter Clewes

“It should be the ambition of every true artist to transform wounds and traumas into masterpieces.”

— Wayne Gerard Trotman

“You know we poor artists have to show ourselves in society from time to time, just to remind the public that we…

— Oscar Wilde

Everything you draw is influenced. It's like yogurt. You need a little bit to start the next batch.

— Sarnath Banerjee

“Pictures tell the story of actual impulse in the artist—or the lack of it.”

— Robert Henri

“FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.”

— Jack Kerouac

Anything that reflects the human condition back on humans in the entertainment medium is art.

— Tucker Max

Emotion resulting from a work of art is only of value when it is not obtained by sentimental blackmail.

— Jean Cocteau

Megacollectors suppose they can enter art history by spending astronomical amounts.

— Jerry Saltz

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.

— Anselm Kiefer

A fixed idea is like the iron rod which sculptors put in their statues. It impales and sustains.

— Hippolyte Taine

We don't need to be taught to make art, but sometimes we need permission to do so. Following instructions is overrated.

— Seth Godin

“After all, there are more valid facts and details in works of art than there are in history books.”

— Charles Chaplin

Good art, no matter how simple or casual-seeming, always carries a high density of choice.

— Walter Darby Bannard

I have no illusions about my art. I am what the public made me and, consequently, I am not likely to forget…

— Conrad Veidt

My paintings don't simply represent what I see; they present viewers with what I want them to see.

— Ken Danby

To know how to produce a work of art is to know how to discard the extraneous.

— Laura Esquivel

Minority art, vernacular art, is marginal art. Only on the margins does growth occur.

— Joanna Russ

I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it.

— Lee Krasner

The most joyous painting is not done for the art world, it is done for the inner world.

— Michael Leunig

“cease to regard the canvas as a surface on which to paint a picture, but instead as a surface on which to…

— Harold Rosenberg

When did the word 'temperament' come into fashion with us? Perhaps it came in when we discovered that artists were human beings.

— Katharine Fullerton Gerould