Top 1200 Graffiti Artist Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

Anyone who asks if graffiti is really art should be cast out into a field, because they're Neanderthals.

Making social comment is an artificial place for an artist to start from. If an artist is touched by some social condition, what the artist creates will reflect that, but you can't force it.

Rhyme written in graffiti xeroxed on blueprints, students influenced are now a nuisance.

'American Graffiti' was unpleasant because of the fact that there was no money, no time, and I was compromising myself to death.

Graffiti doesn't exist unless someone got a photo, because it's gone immediately.

A digital sound sample in angry rap doesn't correspond to the graffiti but the wall.

You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used. An artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it is alive.

The artist usually sets out -- or used to -- to point a moral and adorn a tale. The tale, however, points the other way, as a rule. Two blankly opposing morals, the artist's and the tale's. Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper functions of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.

I've heard my work called 'bold' and 'graffiti-like,' but for me it is always instinctual. I start with a shape or a colour and go from there.

All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars.

Should #? graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: It's way more important than that

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.

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.

At the end of the day, I'm an artist. I may make work and decide to do something political, but it will come out of an artist's position. It won't come out of society telling me I have to. If I do, it's because I choose, as an artist, to do it.

All graffiti is low-level dissent, but stencils have an extra history. They've been used to start revolutions and to stop wars

People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish... but that's only if it's done properly.

Nowadays, if you're a great artist, you don't have to leave the house, which is a really big difference. You're closer to the artist. And the artist can be closer to their artistry without having to always worry about branding themselves or building something image-wise.

I have a company that does design and animation, so obviously graffiti is definitely an intricate part of what we admire and respect in the art world.

T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.

When I got into graffiti, it was the most-exciting art form and it changed the course of my life.

The main reason he wanted to be a recording artist was because it gives you much more freedom in your writing. You only have to please the artist and the artist is you so you can be more daring and experimental.

I want to be an artist artist, a real artist. I don't just want to do this for temporary money.

An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.

Everybody's trying to leave their mark on the world. That's why there's graffiti and babies.

The only duty an artist has is in the quality of the art. There is no moral obligation to denounce. An artist confronted with a tremendous injustice sometimes feels inclined to say something. Denouncing the situation is the artist's choice.

Graffiti is usually a protest - ink on walls - or has a reason for being naughty or aggressive.

I think great art goes beyond the control of the artist. In some ways, art often makes itself and reveals things about that artist that maybe the artist is not fully conscious of.

His achievements read like the graffiti on the walls of a hangman's changing room.

'The Wood' was sort of like 'American Graffiti' for me in a lot of different ways.

There questions of wanting to be an artist, and what does that mean, what makes you an artist? Are you an artist if you're in a gallery in New York and not an artist if you're doing it at home? Do you need legitimation to count? If you've been acculturated to believe that you have certain obligations - familial, social, human - if multitasking has been your forte and that's what's been praised and rewarded, where do you find the single-mindedness, the selfishness to do something like art? I think those are questions that arise differently for women and for men.

When absolutes are abandoned for principles, the U.S. Constitution becomes a blank slate for anyone’s graffiti.

Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good.

A photographer is a photographer and an artist is an artist. I don't believe in labels or titles. Why should a painter or sculptor who has probably never challenged the rules be an artist just because his title and an art school education automatically make him one.

The pool table, like bathroom graffiti and horrible lighting, is a dive bar staple.

When I was 12, I decided to become a musician. 'Physical Graffiti' was the first album I ever owned.

Graffiti writers will never stop. They'll just evolve. It's interesting what ideas people come up with and how it all extends forward.

Should graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: It's way more important than that.

Graffiti's always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then they scrub it off.

I like to believe a true fan of music or an artist has a genuine respect for what the artist does and has a distinct understanding of their actions. In that buying an album they are helping the artist to continue making music. It's hard because everyone wants something to be free.

I know about hip-hop culture, whether it's graffiti writing or DJ-ing or being an MC.

I just like artist-driven projects, but for artists themselves: artist spaces, artist mentor programs, and artists buying buildings and making lofts. Doing whatever we can do. Because at the end of the day, I really think that we as a community only have each other.

A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist.

For me, graffiti writers were always the fascinating eccentrics of hip-hop culture. What they do is secretive by definition, and not remunerative in any way.

I got caught doing graffiti with my friend in broad daylight once.

The trains were the beating heart of the New York graffiti scene.

Aristotelian logic is massive and marmoreal, but every monument accumulates graffiti.

Graffiti is linear and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls. But in my paintings it's more lyrical.

I think an artist can fit under a few different categories depending on how much you explore your creativity. It can vary from artist to artist from musician to performer to vocalist. I thrive on creativity. So in the long run I want to be an all around entertainer.

The idea of a talent that was bigger than an artist's ability to choose to use it, that would dictate the artist's life more than the artist could dictate, was interesting to me.

The whole world is covered in graffiti. No one cares. It's just part of urban noise.

I watched a lot of movies about teenagers, including 'The Last Picture Show,' 'American Graffiti,' 'Rumblefish.' It's one of my favorite genres.

My one failing as an artist is that I depend on reference material to perhaps a greater extent than I should. Delacroix said that if you can draw a man falling out of a window and have the drawing finished before he hits the ground then you're a real artist. I wasn't that kind of artist.

you don't need talent to be an artist. 'Artist' is just a frame of mind. Anybody can be an artist, anybody can communicate if they are desperate enough.

I find it easy to spot a depressive. The illness is scrawled across them like graffiti.

I was a banker in Morocco when I first saw 'American Graffiti.' It was before I was an actor, a melancholy time in my life, and this mood was reflected in the film.

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.

Look at the blogosphere - the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration.

I was worried that I, the artist Morimura, would have conflicts with the participating artists and develop a strenuous relationship with them. But the actual experience was completely the opposite. The artists accepted my requests rather positively, because it came from a fellow artist. I strongly feel that the fact that my being an artist avoided the usual curator vs artist tension, and led to creating a positive atmosphere as well as developing a solidarity amongst artists and building a community for artists.

An artist's career doesn't happen in the cycle of one week of news. An artist's career happens in a lifetime, and if you're a true artist you're willing to die for what you believe in.

I started painting graffiti in the classic New York style of big letters and characters but I was never very good at it.