Top 1200 Great Artist Quotes & Sayings - Page 2

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.

...why is an artist an artist? Artists simply do feel and see things in a different way to other people. In a way it's a blessing, but it can also be a terrible curse. There's a great deal of satisfaction to be earned from it but often it's also a terrible burden.

A true artist could and should create till the day they die. You don't ever fail as an artist until you quit being an artist.

Georges St. Pierre has the best takedowns and dominant wrestling ability, and he's a great athlete, but he's shown he can be knocked out. I think B.J. Penn is the better fighter. He's the great martial artist.

As Christians, we must see that just because an artist-even a great artist-portrays a worldview in writing or on canvas, it does not mean that we should automatically accept that worldview. Good art heightens the impact of that worldview, but it does not make it true.

Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.

I think any artist that's going to become anything in this world faces humility: with great humility comes great success.

The Best of the artist's art, which will one day be in a Museum wall, the Painting that sets the artist apart of all other artist artists.

And do you agree with me, that the first condition of an artist should be to bear respect toward what is great, and to bow to it and acknowledge it and not attempt to extinguish great flames for the sake of making his own rushlight burn more brightly?

It is frequently the tragedy of the great artist for example Vincent Van Gogh, as it is of the great scientist, that he frightens the ordinary man. If he is more than a popular story-teller it may take humanity a generation to absorb and grow accustomed to the new geography with which the scientist or artist presents us. Even then, perhaps only the more imaginative and literate may accept him. Subconsciously the genius is feared as an image breaker; frequently he does not accept the opinions of the mass, or man's opinion of himself.

I'm very picky about the kind of work that I do, and I'm fortunate to have been able to work with great directors and great actors who've helped me grow as an artist.

I am a serious artist in my own right, in the sense that I've spent my entire life being an artist and trying to be an artist and making work.

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.

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.

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.

Che Mills is a great fighter, and a worthy opponent. Just because he hasn't been seen in front of the camera that many times doesn't mean he's not dangerous or a great martial artist.

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.

There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.

Being a talented artist is good, it's nice, but it's not the most important thing. I think being a good storyteller, having a good idea, a good gag, is probably more important than being a great artist.

That is what diminishes the artist and his song. The artist is now hermetically sealed. The publishing company got him his deal and they expect to profit from his songs. So what if he is a better singer than a songwriter; let's put him in a room with a real songwriter. Something great is bound to come...except very often nothing great comes out of such contrived match-ups. Nobody knows where a great song comes from, and that's why so many writers credit the Lord as a co-writer (though I notice they never offer Him half the writer's royalties) when they come up with a real gem.

It is my greatest joy to live a really good part, even though it imposes great strain. An artist is tired but proud when he has created a great work of art. So it is with the actor who really lives a great role and is proud of the part he played.

If the artist isn't having a great day or finds it all boring, my role becomes that of a coach. Getting the very best out of the artist. Helping them perform at their very best when it's game time. One way to get them there is to bring them out of their comfort zones.

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

It wasn't supposed to work - being a new artist, a female artist, an artist on an independent. That's what made it so much sweeter when we hit No. 1.

To call yourself a Chinese artist or woman artist or African artist reflects a certain kind of condition. To me, that is not necessary.

John Cougar Mellencamp - I didn't like him in the beginning. I liked some of the stuff around the 'Scarecrow' period. I go back and forth on him all the time, but I think he's a good artist. I don't know if he's a great artist or not, but he rose above his original level of achievement.

The need to be a great artist makes it hard to be an artist. The need to produce a great work of art makes it hard to produce any art at all.

I'm speaking of the pursuit of excellence in all things. All things! Presence of mind and devotion to craft. A great artist has these. A great chef. A great master of tea. There's powerful kung fu in a well-built house or an eloquent letter, but the limit of your imagination is bones breaking and bullets flying.

If you're an artist or someone creative, it's all about cheap rent and not having to work for a living. That's what it's always been about. Unless you're a trust-funder or you somehow score a great part-time job or you work for another artist, you're going to go where you can afford to live.

The great artist is the simplifier.

I don't know what motivated the artist, which means that the paintings have an intrinsic quality. I think Goethe called it the 'essential dimension,' the thing that makes great works of art great.

I remember being influenced by great artists when I was a kid - not to call myself a great artist - but people who I thought were great enough that they really made a difference. And so I would never want to be disappointed by them, and I want to make sure I never disappoint audience.

[The artist] is like a pump; he has inside him a great pipe that reaches down into the entrails of things, the deepest layers. He sucks up what was lying there below, dim and unnoticed, and brings it in great jets to the sunlight.

As an artist, illustrator, and photographer, most of my daily work was formed around the Art & Entertainment business, which was about packaging ideas that looked like they were crafted as artist ideas. In the distributed products, my artist credit was hidden inside the package of the artist or entertainment personality.

Obviously, something like ballet, you have music, you dance with the music and it's a very direct connection. With visual art, when there's no music that accompanies the art, such as great masterworks in a museum, you wind up interpreting what the artist is doing, how the artist made that work and what they're conveying.

I am in no sense of the word a great artist, not even a great animator; I have always had men working for me whose skills were greater than my own. I am an idea man.

There are so many great artists out there; it's hard to choose one. But, I would love to work with Ledisi; she has a great voice. I also admire and respect John Legend. When he wrote "All of Me," I fell in love with the melody and music. He is an artist that really loves music and just has a great way with words.

Becoming a great preacher, like becoming a great artist, requires a life commitment.

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.

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.

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 am convinced that each work of art, be it a great work of genius or something very small, has its own life, and it will come to the artist, the composer or the writer or the painter, and say, "Here I am: compose me; or write me; or paint me"; and the job of the artist is to serve the work.

An artist has an obligation to tell the truth. [...] that the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves. We are the monsters. (And the heroes too). Each of us has within himself the capacity for great good, and great evil.

The artist who paints the emotions creates an enclosed world... the picture... which, like a book, has the same interest no matter where it happens to be. Such an artist, we may imagine, spends a great deal of time doing nothing but looking, both around him and inside him.

You are born an artist or you are not. And you stay an artist, dear, even if your voice is less of a fireworks. The artist is always there.

I just think that Jack White is the consummate artist - an artist's artist. I'm a huge fan.

When you have a chance to be an artist with an audience in your lifetime, you have to say thanks to your audience. That's a great thing. That's the best thing that can happen to an artist.

every artist is both male and female, and ... sometimes, the two great elements are in conjunction with him, so that all by himself he suddenly gets the melody and the burst of feeling of a great symphony without any external stimuli.

The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing, because we want to flinch. The artist must go into the white hot center of himself, and our impulse when we get there is to look away and avert our eyes.

'Idol' was a great experience. It was a great stepping-stone. I got to meet a lot of amazing people through that and learn a lot of great things. But afterward - that's what I tell a lot of people - it's up to you to represent it as an artist.

All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis.

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

I think the popular concept of the artist is a person who has this great passion and enthusiasm and super emotion. He just throws himself into this great masterpiece and collapses from exhaustion when it's finished. It's really not that way at all.

I don't think it's an artist's responsibility to be political all the time. I think your first responsibility as an artist is to make music that people will listen to and enjoy. However, I think that when you are able to say something that is moving and put it in a great song, then that is even better.

No nation can be really great unless it is great in peace, in industry, integrity, honesty. Skilled intelligence in civic affairs and industrial enterprises alike; the special ability of the artist, the man of letters, the man of science, and the man of business; the rigid determination to wrong no man, and to stand for righteousness-all these are necessary in a great nation.

Michelangelo is a constructor, and Rafael an artist who, great as he is, is always limited by the model. When he tries to be thoughtful he falls below the niveau of his great rival.

There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an 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 definitely believe that the power of the artist is in the artist's hands now. We're kind of in the wild, wild west of music where labels don't exist anymore. And you go as far as you take yourself. And that's that American self-determination that is one of the reasons this country is so great and can survive on autopilot right now.

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.