
“Everybody has antennae. Some people mute them. If you're an artist, you enhance them.”
on being an artist
Though often used by Graham, she credited this to Robert Edmond Jones. Agnes de Mille states in "The Life and Work of Martha Graham" (2010), p. 215: It was Jones who used to say to his classes, "Some of you are doomed to be artists." Martha picked up this phrase and used it many times thereafter.
Misattributed
“Everybody has antennae. Some people mute them. If you're an artist, you enhance them.”
on being an artist
“An artist will betray himself by some sort of sincerity.”
The Dagger with Wings (1926)
Karen Smith et al. Ai Weiwei (Contemporary Artists (Phaidon), London: Phaidon Press, 2009.
2000-09, 2009
On becoming an artist in “‘There’s No Diploma in the World That Declares You an Artist’: Watch Kara Walker Lay Out Her Advice for Art Students” https://news.artnet.com/art-world/watch-kara-walker-art-21-1316030 in artnetnews (2018 Jul 12)
Source: 1890s - 1910s, The Writings of a Savage (1996), p. 219: quote from 1903
after 2010, Isa Genzken, the artist who doesn't do interviews' (2014)
On how artist expression can be a form of political activism in “A militant mellows” https://www.theguardian.com/music/2002/sep/28/artsfeatures.popandrock in The Guardian (27 Sep 2002)