A Quote by Andre Gide

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.

Andre Gide

Quote Topics

After Artist Generally Himself Influenced Knows Lets New Nothing Nothing New Only Public Success

Quote Author

Andre Gide
French - Writer
November 22, 1869 - February 19, 1951

Now the expectation is that, once the public decides that the artist is gentrified, the public demands that the artist stop growing. And [the public] actually puts all their energy into reasserting or re-establishing what the artist has long ago left behind. Because that's what they want. The source of creativity, the gift that's been given, be damned.

Billy Corgan

The only artist who does not deserve respect is the one who works to please the public, for commercial success or for official success.

Jacques Maritain

Confidence and courage are special skills to the art ... Within the four walls of his study, the artist should be modest, work diligently and conscientiously. While for the public, he'll show himself audacious, yes even into cheerful boldness. And so a new public's darling has arisen.

Robert Schumann

To express himself well, the artist should be hidden. The trouble is that if an artist knows he has genius, he's done for. The only salvation is to work like a labourer, and not have delusions of grandeur.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Public art is ephemeral by nature. Google 's new project not only catalogs an artist's work but archives it and allows people to see the art long after it has disappeared.

Shepard Fairey

An artist is above all a human being, profoundly human to the core. If the artist can't feel everything that humanity feels, if the artist isn't capable of loving until he forgets himself and sacrifices himself if necessary, if he won't put down his magic brush and head the fight against the oppressor, then he isn't a great artist.

Diego Rivera

The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.

Marcel Duchamp

A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public to him are non-existent.

Oscar Wilde

To produce pure proletarian art the artist must be at one with the worker; this is impossible, not for political reasons, but because the artist never is at one with any public.

William Empson

The artists catch what's in the air. It's not because the artist "felt like it" or is a guru who channels the truth of the universe in some opaque, abstract way, or even in a realistic painting. The comics artist is someone who has the humility to set himself up in public culture and to communicate with the reader. If your image doesn't make sense, it's your problem, and I shouldn't publish it.

Francoise Mouly

The public is the tribunal before which all art is judged - not the critics or the academies. The public is the artist's only patron, and has certain fundamental rights. It will submit to education, and will respond to suggestion, but it will not be bullied.

Walter J. Phillips

The danger is in pleasing an immediate public: the immediate public that comes around you and takes you in and accepts you and gives you success and everything. Instead of that, you should wait for fifty years or a hundred years for your true public. That is the only public that interests me.

Marcel Duchamp

Welsh rugby has done its dirty washing in public. It's nothing new. We're a tribal bunch. If warring parties want to sway public opinion, they do it in the public arena.

Alun Wyn Jones

A society - any society - is defined as a set of mutual benefits and duties embodied most visibly in public institutions: public schools, public libraries, public transportation, public hospitals, public parks, public museums, public recreation, public universities, and so on.

Robert Reich

The first choice an artist makes is precisely to be an artist, and if he chooses to be an artist it is in consideration of what he is himself and because of a certain idea he has of art