A Quote by James Vincent McMorrow

It's like half the campaign of selling a record is trying to convince people that you're an artist. Well, I am an artist. This is what I do. — © James Vincent McMorrow
It's like half the campaign of selling a record is trying to convince people that you're an artist. Well, I am an artist. This is what I do.
I am a serious artist in my own right, in the sense that I've spent my entire life being an artist and trying to be an artist and making work.
I am an artist, and I understand the pros and cons of being an artist, and the pressures of being an artist, and how much being an artist can be torture to people around you; you know, you friends and your family and how material you can be, and how it's hard to take criticism and all the things like that.
When you are writing for an artist you are trying to get into that artist's point of view. What does that artist want to say? What do they care about? And musically, you want to show off that artist.
I am pretty bad at doing my makeup myself, so these days, I am learning from a makeup artist. I treat my face as a sketchbook and am gradually trying things that I learned from the artist.
I learned how difficult it is to be an artist. There are always compromises. The record company wants you to do this, your fans want you to do this, your family, you can't concentrate on your work. It's a hard thing to be an artist and not give up. That's why I have so much respect for people like Dylan and Neil Young and Tom Waits, because they keep at it. I have a new respect for a true artist.
In the record business, if you sign an artist that don't really know too much about the business, you can really get over on them in a lot of different ways, so it's a lot of people that don't give artist the game because they're trying to make the most money in the fastest way off their artists.
Back in the early days like for the Temptations, Supremes and Four Tops, artist development was alive in record companies. Every artist had a moment to develop the record visually. When the web took over and camera phones, it stripped the artists of the power to figure it out. So there's a need to bridge that gap and that's my job.
I don't think radio is selling records like they used to. They'd hawk the song and hawk the artist and you'd get so excited, you'd stop your car and go into the nearest record store.
I think some people have this thing where just because you do singles that means you're not a real artist. It's like hold on a minute - I'm selling millions of records here and been streamed billions of times... How can I not be taken as a real artist just because these songs are singles?
I've established myself as a proper artist. And it's ridiculous when anyone questions my credibility - I've had four number one singles and I've also sold over two and a half million albums. I shouldn't have to convince people that I'm credible, but I'm glad people are now taking me more seriously.
I don't think you have to earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, then art is what you do, whether or not you're paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation.
There’s no “correct path” to becoming a real artist. You might think you’ll gain legitimacy by going to university, getting published, getting signed to a record label. But it’s all bullshit, and it’s all in your head. You’re an artist when you say you are. And you’re a good artist when you make somebody else experience or feel something deep or unexpected.
There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist.
What an artist is trying to do for people is bring them closer to something, because of course art is about sharing. You wouldn't be an artist unless you wanted to share an experience, a thought.
Being an artist doesn't just mean you have a song. That doesn't make you an artist. The word 'artist' means so many different things, and I feel like to be a real one, you really have to do it all. The people that I think of as artists - Tyler the Creator, Childish Gambino, Kanye West - are doing the most.
Sometime during the mid-50s I said, 'I am an artist.' Before that, for many years, I had said, 'I'm going to be an artist.' Then I went through a change of mind and a change of heart. What made 'going to be an artist' into 'being an artist', was, in part, a spiritual change.
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