Artist Quotes - page 12

The artist after all is a solitary being. (Virginia Woolf)
I think an artist can fit under a few different categories depending on how much you explore your creativity. It can vary from artist to artist from musician to performer to vocalist. I thrive on creativity. So in the long run I want to be an all around entertainer. View quote
Christina Aguilera
An artist who theorizes about his work is no longer artist but critic. View quote
H. G. Wells
A man is a critic when he cannot be an artist, in the same way that a man becomes an informer when he cannot be a soldier. View quote
Gustave Flaubert
The superior artist is the one who knows how to be influenced. View quote
Clement Greenberg
Complete honesty has nothing to do with 'purity' or naivety. The full truth is unattainable to naivety, and the completely honest artist is not pure in heart. View quote
Clement Greenberg
Picasso has a volatile, explosive presence. He seems to take art back to an earlier function, before the centuries of museums and masterpieces; he is the artist as clown, as conjurer, as master funmaker. View quote
Pauline Kael
An artist is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artist takes it personally. View quote
Seth Godin
I am not an artist and never have been. Rather I am like a craftsman and feel very close to the mediaeval artisans who produced their work anonymously and who, along with their apprentices, had a true feeling for the physical materials they were working with. View quote
Werner Herzog
The man who tells the tale if he has a tale worth telling will know exactly what he is about and this business of the artist as a sort of starry-eyed inspired creature, dancing along, with his feet two or three feet above the surface of the earth, not really knowing what sort of prints he's leaving behind him, is nothing like the truth. View quote
William Golding
Little did the artist know, who neglected his appearance in favor of his work, that the years would produce a breed that spent hours meticulously acquiring a neglected look to appear like an artist. (Vanna Bonta)
What distinguishes a great artist from a weak one is first their sensibility and tenderness; second, their imagination, and third, their industry. View quote
Salman Rushdie
There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist. It's not like becoming a doctor or something. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist. View quote
Kara Walker
I regard myself as an entertainer much more than an artist. View quote
Peter Jackson
All serious art, music, literature is a critical act. It is so, firstly, in the sense of Matthew Arnold's phrase: "a criticism of life." Be it realistic, fantastic, Utopian or satiric, the construct of the artist is a counter-statement to the world. View quote
George Steiner
The sensitive artist knows that a bitter wind is blowing. View quote
Herbert Read
Once we become conscious of a feeling and attempt to make a corresponding form, we are engaged in an activity which, far from being sincere, is prepared (as any artist if he is sincere will tell you) to moderate feelings to fit the form. The artist's feeling for form is stronger than a formless feeling. View quote
Herbert Read
And do you agree with me, that the first condition of an artist should be to bear respect towards what is great, and to bow to it and acknowledge it, and not attempt to extinguish great flames for the sake of making his own rushlight burn more brightly? View quote
Felix Mendelssohn
I'm for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It's really tragic. View quote
Marilyn Monroe
It seems to me that today, if the artist wishes to be serious - to cut out a little original niche for himself, or at least preserve his own innocence of personality - he must once more sink himself in solitude. There is too much talk and gossip; pictures are apparently made, like stock-market prices, by competition of people eager for profit; in order to do anything at all we need (so to speak) the wit and ideas of our neighbors as much as the businessmen need the funds of others to win on the market. All this traffic sharpens our intelligence and falsifies our judgment. View quote
Edgar Degas
A man is an artist only at certain moments, by an effort of will. Objects have the same appearance for everybody. (Edgar Degas)
Neither natural ability without instruction nor instruction without natural ability can make the perfect artist. View quote
Vitruvius
The artist who is after success lets himself be influenced by the public. Generally such an artist contributes nothing new, for the public acclaims only what it already knows, what it recognizes. View quote
André Gide
The biggest challenge for any craft person or artist is to accept the constraints of their medium and make something beautiful despite them. That's kind of fun, actually. View quote
Ayelet Waldman
No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissastifaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others. View quote
Martha Graham