quotations about artists
In every artist we can perceive a man with both a message and a method. His message may be innate in him, but his method he has to acquire from others.
BRANDER MATTHEWS
The Principles of Playmaking
The primary distinction of the artist is that he must actively cultivate that state which most men, necessarily, must avoid: the state of being alone.
JAMES BALDWIN
The Price of the Ticket
When you are a young artist, you have no idea what you are doing. Every artist who says he knows, it is a lie.
MARINA ABRAMOVIC
"Marina Abramovic talks friends, enemies and fear", The Guardian, October 22, 2016
The artist alone among men knows what true humility means. His reach forever exceeds his grasp. He can never be satisfied with his work. He knows when he has done well, but he knows he has never attained his dream. He knows he never can.
RHETA CHILDE DORR
A Woman of Fifty
All art is political, even an artist's choice to focus on the purely aesthetic.
FELIX GONZALEZ-TORRES
"Tracing Tradition in a Survey of Six Iranian Artists", Hyperallergic, March 18, 2016
Artists are the serfs of a leisure society.
BAUVARD
Some Inspiration for the Overenthusiastic
An artist has to stick true to their own beliefs and be a pioneer. They're not necessarily pleasing a studio or a government or anybody else but just being honest and raw and expressing themselves in a beautiful way. That's not always what people want to hear or expect to see.
PAMELA ANDERSON
interview, Parade Magazine, January 23, 2015
Despite the daunting problems of identity that beset our contemporary society, we can see in the horizon the beginnings of a new relationship between artist and community which will not flourish like the mango-trick in the twinkling of an eye but will rather, in the hard and bitter manner of David Diop's young tree, grow patiently and obstinately to the ultimate victory of liberty and fruition.
CHINUA ACHEBE
Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays
What separates an artist from a creator, however, is one's insatiable desire to develop his or her craft, one's perpetual feelings of dissatisfaction and the willingness to embrace challenges even if that means reinvention.
NICHOLAS LAROUSSE
"An Artist's Way: In Other Words by Jhumpa Lahiri", Everyday eBook, March 2, 2016
Those who are to follow the arts should have a training in what is called poverty. Given a comfortable middle-class start in life, the artist is almost sure to end up by becoming a bellyacher, constantly complaining because the public does not rush forward at once to proclaim him.
SHERWOOD ANDERSON
A Story Teller's Story
Studies have proven that artists change communities and have a positive financial impact. The presence of artists draws more artists who in turn attract outsiders to areas, and that brings restaurants and coffee shops and bars and small businesses.
DOUG & EILEEN LEUNIG
"Peoria Artists Are Starving", Community Word, March 1, 2016