A Quote by Catherine Drinker Bowen

I have noted that, barring accidents, artists whose powers wear best and last longest are those who have trained themselves to work under adversity. Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.
Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.
Vulnerability of artists is definitely what makes organizations like PEN necessary because, as I tried to argue, the actual work that writers and artists do has an ornery way of surviving. Particularly in this age of the internet, it is very easy for forbidden work to be found online somewhere if you know where to look. Artists themselves, however, are in increasing danger, and not just artists. The great concern is that year after year, rising numbers of journalists are being killed in pursuit of their work.
Ultimately, it comes down to taste. It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things that humans have done and then try to bring those things into what you're doing. Picasso had a saying: good artists copy, great artists steal. And we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas, and I think part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.
The best artists are people who don't consider themselves artists, and the people who do are usually the most pretentious and annoying. They've got their priorities wrong. They're just doing it to be artists rather than because they want to do it.
The best artists are the ones that work the hardest, and if you work hard enough, you'll eventually experience the happy accidents that are art.
Art is a high calling - fears are coincidental. Coincidental, sneaky and disruptive, we might add, disguising themselves variously as laziness, resistance to deadlines, irritation with materials or surroundings, distraction over the achievements of others - indeed as anything that keeps you from giving your work your best shot. What separates artists from ex-artists is that those who challenge their fears, continue; those who don't, quit.
I cannot avoid condemning all those who, from self-conceit have the pretension to imitate great artists of the past. If their powers of emotion be weak, their powers of expression will be likewise.
I'm quite drawn to women artists who use themselves in their work. There is a very feminine point of view, the use of female archetypes. I love artists who play with those kind of things genuinely.
I think what happened in the last 10 or 15 years in the art market is that all the players - and that includes artists, dealers, art advisors, everyone - basically became dealers. We've had old-school collectors morph into speculators, flipping works. We've seen auction houses buying works directly from artists or from sleazy middlemen. The last step before the crash was the artists themselves supplying the auction houses. Dealing themselves, you know? The art world is as unregulated as any financial market there is.
Most inventors and engineers I've met are like me. They're shy and they live in their heads. The very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone.
In the industry, artists of of color struggle the most. Caucasian artists have really solidified themselves in the industry, and with African Americans now we see directors and producers who vow to only produce work that shines a light on African American artists. But everybody in the middle gets lost.
I love artists whose work feels animated! Matt Cummings, Ian McGinty, Jake Myler, Arielle Jovellanos, Drew Rausch, Zachary Sterling, Troy Little - I feel like most of the artists I've worked with have a lot of movement and life in their work.
Artists look at the environment, and the best artists correctly diagnose the problem. I'm not saying artists can't be leaders, but that's not the job of art, to lead. Bob Marley, Nina Simone, Harry Belafonte - there are artists all through history who have become leaders, but that was already in them, nothing to do with their art.
Art in its execution and direction is dependent on the time in which it lives, and artists are creatures of their epoch. The highest art will be that which in its conscious content presents the thousandfold problems of the day, the art which has been visibly shattered by the explosions of last week The best and most extraordinary artists will be those who every hour snatch the tatters of their bodies out of the frenzied cataract of life, who, with bleeding hands and hearts, hold fast to the intelligence of their time.
What do great artists do when you see a world around you that's in turmoil? Some of the best artists make you feel good (hah), they look to the future.
The best musicians or sound-artists are people who never considered themselves to be artists or musicians.
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!