A Quote by Clement Greenberg

The superior artist is the one who knows how to be influenced. — © Clement Greenberg
The superior artist is the one who knows how to be influenced.
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.
I love light in my work but I was never influenced by neon signage in itself, rather its effect on nature and architecture. You can't ignore what's around you, but at the same time, an artist who has a sophisticated form language knows how to pull in different elements, and readjust and redirect those. . . . So it becomes an engineering process, too.
The stupid believe that to be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows how difficult it is.
No artist knows everything... but since every artist knows more than he can tell, all art is lying by omission.
He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.
Every great artist must begin by learning to draw with the single line, and my advice to young animators is to learn how to live with that razor-sharp instrument or art. An artist who comes to me with eight or ten good drawings of the human figure in simple lines has a good chance of being hired. But I will tell the artist who comes with a bunch of drawings of Bugs Bunny to go back and learn how to draw the human body. An artist who knows that can learn how to draw ANYTHING, including Bugs Bunny.
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.
It is one mark of a superior mind to understand and be influenced by the superiority of others.
After one has been in a lowly position, one knows how dangerous it is to climb to a high place, Once one has been in the dark, one knows how revealing it is to go into the light. Having maintained quietude, one knows how tiring compulsive activity is. Having nurtured silence, one knows how disturbing much talk is.
The artist knows how to sing, not how to count.
To behave creatively in art means behavior with skill; and skill comes from discipline, not derangement. The artist who knows the rules -and proportion is one of them- knows where to bend and how to break them.
R&B is the one thing that has influenced every kind of music. Every artist that there is, from those that are sung the most to Adele - you know, she was so influenced by so many R&B artists and soul music - it's clear in her writing that that's where it comes from.
The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he knows where to find us and how--usually in the bath or in sexual intercourse or asleep.
No grand inquisitor has in readiness such terrible tortures as has anxiety and no spy knows how to attack more artfully the man he suspects, choosing the instant when he is weakest; nor knows how to lay traps where he will be caught and ensnared as anxiety knows how, and no sharp-witted judge knows how to interrogate, to examine the accused, as anxiety does, which never lets him escape.
For instance, I may bring a certain feminist perspective to my songwriting, because that's how I see life. I'm interested in art, poetry, and music. As that kind of artist, I can do anything. I can say anything. It's about self-expression. It knows no package - there's no such thing. That's what being an artist is.
I strongly suggest that we play down basics like who influenced whom, and instead study the way the influence is transformed, in other words: how the artist made it his own.
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