A Quote by James Whistler

An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision.

James Whistler

Quote Topics

Art Artist His Labor Paid Vision

Quote Author

James Whistler
American - Artist
July 11, 1834 - July 17, 1903

The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.

James A. Michener

The artist seeks contact with his intuitive sense of the gods, but in order to create his work, he cannot stay in this seductive and incorporeal realm. He must return to the material world in order to do his work. It's the artist's responsibility to balance mystical communication and the labor of creation.

Patti Smith

The director works as an interpretive artist, but he's still an artist, so you also have to give him room to create and to put his vision of the play or his translation or interpretation of the material on the stage.

August Wilson

The artist, viewing his fellows through his personal vision, has through the ages attempted to portray what he sees and to present his understanding of it. Censorship in his case has perpetrated heavy and sometimes reprehensible blunders.

Hollis Alpert

One of the worst things that can happen to an artist is to perceive himself as the owner of his art, and art as his tool. A product of the marketplace sensibility, this attitude barely differs on a psychological plane from the patron's view of the artist as a paid employee.

Joseph Brodsky

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which.

François-René de Chateaubriand

In serving his vision of the truth, the artist best serves his nation.

John F. Kennedy

Too often in the past, we have thought of the artist as an idler and dilettante and of the lover of arts as somehow sissy and effete. We have done both an injustice. The life of the artist is, in relation to his work, stern and lonely. He has labored hard, often amid deprivation, to perfect his skill. He has turned aside from quick success in order to strip his vision of everything secondary or cheapening. His working life is marked by intense application and intense discipline.

John F. Kennedy

The intensity of vision in the artist and of vividness in his creations are the sole tests of his imaginative power.

George Henry Lewes

Clearly the hardest thing for the working artist is to create his own conception and follow it, unafraid of the strictures it imposes, however rigid these may be... I see it as the clearest evidence of genius when an artist follows his conception, his idea, his principle, so unswervingly that he has this truth of his constantly in his control, never letting go of it even for the sake of his own enjoyment of his work.

Andrei Tarkovsky

From the root, the sap rises up into the artist, flows through him, flows to his eye. Overwhelmed and activated by the force of the current, he conveys his vision into his work. And yet, standing at his appointed place as the trunk of the tree, he does nothing other than gather and pass on what rises from the depths. He neither serves nor commands he transmits. His position is humble. And the beauty at the crown is not his own; it has merely passed through him.

Paul Klee

They proclaim that every man is entitled to exist without labor and, the laws of reality to the contrary notwithstanding, is entitled to receive his 'minimum sustenance' his food, his clothes, his shelter with no effort on his part, as his due and his birthright. To receive it from whom.

Ayn Rand

The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion.

H. L. Mencken

It is commonly a dangerous thing for a man to have more sense than his neighbors. Socrates paid for his superiority with his life; and if Aristotle saved his skin, it was by taking to his heels in time.

Christoph Martin Wieland

With Prabhu Deva, you have to fulfil his exact vision. Till then, he will not be satisfied, because his film has his vision and he will make it only in that way.