A Quote by Wayne Gerard Trotman

For most people, art is only valuable if other people say it is; and artists are only worthwhile if they are either rich and famous, or dead.

Wayne Gerard Trotman

Quote Topics

Art Art Is Artists Dead Either Famous Most Only Other People People Say Rich Say Valuable Worthwhile

Quote Author

Wayne Gerard Trotman
Filmmaker
Born: May 16, 1964

I always want to say to people who want to be rich and famous: 'try being rich first'. See if that doesn't cover most of it. There's not much downside to being rich, other than paying taxes and having your relatives ask you for money. But when you become famous, you end up with a 24-hour job.

Bill Murray

Not to say people shouldn't get rich from art. I adore the alchemy wherein artists who cast a complex spell make rich people give them their money. (Just writing it makes me cackle.) But too many artists have been making money without magic.

Jerry Saltz

My mother really didn't come from artists. Her famous quote to me was, "The only artists I've ever heard of are dead." The pottery classes were meant to be a part of my overall uplift. I knew what it meant to be sent to art classes, but I still didn't know anything about being an artist.

Glenn Ligon

Thank God that Bumble-Ardy's parents are dead so we don't have to wonder what they did to him. We only know that they were famous, and famous people have unhappy children for the most part. They don't have the time to take care of them. So he's a troubled pig-boy, a kid you've got to watch.

Maurice Sendak

There are two kinds of people in the world—only two kinds. Not black or white, rich or poor, but those either dead in sin or dead to sin.

Leonard Ravenhill

One of the interesting things here is that the people who should be shaping the future are politicians. But the political framework itself is so dead and closed that people look to other sources, like artists, because art and music allow people a certain freedom.

Thom Yorke

The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous. I have contented these people with all the many bizarre things that come into my head. And the less they understand, the more they admire it. By amusing myself with all these games, all this nonsense, all these picture puzzles, I became famous... I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

Pablo Picasso

In chess the most unbelievable thing for me is that it's a game for everybody: rich, poor, girl, boy, old, young. It's a fantastic game which can unite people and generations! It's a language which you'll find people "speak" in every country. If you reach a certain level you find a very rich world! Art, sport, logic, psychology, a battlefield, imagination, creativity not only in practical games but don't forget either how amazing a feeling it is to compose a study, for example (unfortunately that's not appreciated these days but it's a fantastic part of chess!).

Judit Polgar

That's where the songs come from: that's what I'd most want people to understand. What sounds good or looks good, that's nothing. The only worthwhile thing in art is seeing someone else's heart.

Adam Duritz

Sometimes there are painters or very famous artists who start to become artists after they are dead because an audience or a public know about their art after they die.

Rokia Traore

The only way to be turned off to being famous is to be famous. And I only have like a tiny, tiny bit of that, and I'm already disgusted by it. But I realize that the only way to be disgusted by fame is to be famous, because otherwise it looks amazing. Then people stop you on the street, and it's like the most annoying thing in the world. The first time it happened it's great, and then the second time you have to shake somebody's hand.

Jesse Eisenberg

They say rock is dead. Andy [Warhol] said art is dead. God is dead according to Nietzsche. If everything's dead what's alive? Only technology. We're in the era of technology.

Sean Lennon

The only way to eliminate any government choice on what art is worthwhile, what art isn't worthwhile, is to get the government totally out of the business of funding.

Antonin Scalia

Either all things proceed from one intelligent source and come together as in one body, and the part ought not to find fault with what is done for the benefit of the whole; or there are only atoms, and nothing else than a mixture and dispersion. Why, then, art thou disturbed? Say to this ruling faculty, Art thou dead, art thou corrupted, art thou playing the hypocrite, art thou become a beast, dost thou herd and feed with the rest?