A Quote by Willa Cather

Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feeling, the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion.

Willa Cather

Quote Topics

Art Artist Barriers Begins Certain Composition Creatures Does Down Each Emotion Every Farther Feeling First First Thing Free Freedom General Goes His Imagination Intense Key Knows Lay Limitations More Never New New Work Objects Other Relation Splendid The First Thing Thing Truth Work

Quote Author

Willa Cather
American - Author
December 7, 1873 - April 24, 1947

An artist has to train his responses more than other people do. He has to be as disciplined as a mathematician. Discipline is not a restriction but an aid to freedom. It prepares an artist to choose his own limitations.

Wayne Thiebaud

The amateur believes he must first overcome his fear; then he can do his work. The professional knows that fear can never be overcome. He knows there is no such thing as a fearless warrior or a dread-free artist.

Steven Pressfield

Thus a man was born into a fixed relation to certain gods as surely as he was born into a relation to his fellow-men; and his religion... was simply one side of the general scheme of conduct prescribed for him by his position as a member of society.

William Robertson Smith

In his very rejection of art Walt Whitman is an artist. He tried to produce a certain effect by certain means and he succeeded....He stands apart, and the chief value of his work is in its prophecy, not in its performance. He has begun a prelude to larger themes. He is the herald to a new era. As a man he is the precursor of a fresh type. He is a factor in the heroic and spiritual evolution of the human being. If Poetry has passed him by, Philosophy will take note of him.

Oscar Wilde

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don't believe any real artist cares whether what he does is 'art' or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

Robert Henri

The first choice an artist makes is precisely to be an artist, and if he chooses to be an artist it is in consideration of what he is himself and because of a certain idea he has of art

Albert Camus

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

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.

Laura Nyro

My choice of colors does not rest on any scientific theory; it is based on observation, on feeling, on the experience of my sensibility. Inspired by certain pages of Delacroix, an artist like Signac is preoccupied with complementary colors, and the theoretical knowledge of them will lead him to use a certain tone in a certain place. But I simply try to put down colors which render my sensation.

Henri Matisse

The artist's imagination may wander far from nature. But as long as it is a living, moving power in his brain, isn't it just as real as any other natural phenomenon? The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.

Bill Vaughan

I don't believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there's one thing that's dangerous for an artist, it's precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and the rest of it.

Federico Fellini

If you want to do a certain thing, you first have to be a certain person. Once you become that certain person, you will not care anymore about doing that certain thing.

Dogen

I always worked as an individual artist even when Group Material asked me to join the group. There are certain things that I can do by myself that I would never be able to do with Group Material. First of all, they are a totally democratic entity and although you learn a lot from it, and it's very moving, it's very exacting, everything has to be by consensus, which is the beauty of it, but it is much more work. It's worth it 100%. But as an individual artist there are certain things that I want to bring out and express, and the collaborative practice is not conducive to that.

Felix Gonzalez-Torres

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 so-called evils are evils only in relation to a certain thing, and that which is evil in relation to a certain existing thing, either includes the non-existence of that thing or the non-existence of some of its good conditions.

Maimonides

A Quote by Willa Cather

Quote Topics

Quote Author

Related Quotes

Related Authors