Quotes about artist (2524 quotes, page 8)

“There is a reciprocal action between the work of art and the viewer. The river changes the work of art and criticism can also change the artist... There are so many ideas afloat; any of them could have triggered the work of art. It is impossible to determine exactly if the idea has been transmitted by the critic, or if the work itself has determined its outcome..”

Anselm Kiefer (1945) German painter and sculptor

(1986) n.p.
Structures are no longer valid', in "Ein Gespräch..."

Art , Idea , Change

“What kind of bananas do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?”

"Weird Al" Yankovic (1959) American singer-songwriter, music producer, accordionist, actor, comedian, writer, satirist, and parodist

Replying to a fan criticising the poor seats a reviewer of a concert received. "Ask Al" Q&As for September 6, 2004 http://www.weirdal.com/aaarchive.htm#090604.

“The thought of becoming a painter never as much as occurred to me. I would have laughed out loud if someone had suggested that I choose painting as a career. To be a painter is not a business, no more than to be an artist, lover, racer, dreamer, or prizefighter. It is a gift of Nature, a gift..”

Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) French painter

Quote of De Vlaminck; as cited in Vlaminck, Klaus G. Perls, The Hyperion Press, New York 1941, p. 51
To support his family of four, De Vlaminck had to find other means by which to earn a living, and ended up taking several other jobs, including working as a billiards players, a writer, a general worker, and even a cyclist
Quotes undated

Lovers , Business , Nature , Painting

“An art mode, new or old, is for the creative mind essentially a point of beginning. Content is brought into being by the activity through which the artist translates the movement into himself. In such an appropriation, there is no difference between an ongoing movement and one that is finished. During the reign of Minimalism, a painter might realize the new through Impressionism. That art history has a schedule of continuous advances en masse is a fantasy of the historian. The shared syntax of art movements is constantly replaced by the sensibility and practice of individuals. The avant-garde art of yesterday is the only modern equivalent of an aesthetic tradition. The fading of the ideas of a movement does not mean that it can no longer be a stimulus to creation. At the very dawn of a movement, the work of its artists commences to replace the concept; instead of Cubism there appear Picasso, Braque, Gris. Compared to the activities to which they give rise, ideas in art have a brief life. In the last analysis, the vitality of art in our time depends on works produced by movements after they have died.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art on the Edge, (1975), p. 230, Art on the Edge (1975) "Shall These Bones Live?: Art Movement Ghosts"

Life , Art , History , Idea

“Today every child knows what Merz is. But what is 'i'? I is the middle vowel of the alphabet and the designation for the consequence of Merz in relation to an intensive apprehension of the art form. For the shaping of the work of art Merz uses large ready-made complexes that count as material, to shorten as much as possible the path leading from the intuition to the actualization (Sichtbarmachung) of the artistic idea, so as to avoid heat loss through friction. i defines this path as o (i setzt diesen Weg = null). Idea, material, and work of art are the same. i apprehends the work of art in nature. Here the artistic shaping is the recognition of rhythm and expression in a part of nature. Thus, no loss through friction i. e., no disturbing distraction during creation occurs here.”

Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) German artist

1920s
Source: the article 'i ein Manifest' (or 'i-manifest'), Kurt Schwitters, in Merz 2. 1923; as quoted in Kurt Schwitters Merzbau: The Cathedral of Erotic Misery, by Elizabeth Burns Gamard, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2000, p. 116

Art , Idea , Nature , Loss

“One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.”

Thornton Wilder (1897–1975) American playwright and novelist

Writers at Work interview (1958)

Art , Personality

“Most people's lives are governed by willpower. An artist is someone who has no will.”

Bram van Velde (1895–1981) Dutch painter

1960's, Conversations with Samuel Beckett and Bram van Velde' (1965 - 1969)

People

“Now I have no idea how this has come about - probably a rumour spread by my enemies - but apparently there's a general belief among some sections of the surf community that I am a bit of a drop-in artist.”

Tom Carroll

Carroll's "bronzed emperor" column in Australia's Surfing Life magazine (edition unknown, the column about drop-ins).

Communication , Idea

“The new plastic idea thus correctly represents actual aesthetic relationships. To the modern artist, it is a natural consequence of all the plastic ideas of the past. This is particularly true of painting, which is the art least bound to contingencies. The picture can be a pure reflection of life in its deepest essence.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

1910's, Natural Reality and Abstract Reality', 1919

Life , Art , Idea , Nature

“The skills of the modern artist are the opposite of those of the craftsman: instead of acquiring techniques for producing classes of objects, the artist today perfects the means suited to his particular work.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 51, "Inquest into Modernism"

Perfection

“The older I get, the more confused I get. I used to think that age would bring wisdom. It doesn't, it just brings confusion. But I find that this confusion is artistically useful. It's a kind of progression, a negative progression. It's moving into areas that you didn't know were there. It becomes more dreamlike all the time. When I was starting out as a novelist, I would have been furious if anyone said to me that novels are dream-like or that they're doing things the novelist didn't know he was doing. Now, I find that it's absolutely true.”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

Oblique dreamer (2000)

Wisdom , Age , Dreams , Thinking

“I've been educated in some pretty lively barrooms, like the Cedar Bar in New York. And I went to high school with Frank Stella and when he got out of college he went to New York and started painting… I was working with sculpture in a kind of dilatory way, and he said to come up and work in his tiny loft when he wasn't there. At the same time I sort of dabbled in a little bit of painting, and a kind of confusion. I was an eye, ear, nose, and throat person too… One day Frank Stella just said to me, 'Look, if you paint another painting I'm going to cut off your hands.' I asked, 'Can't I become a good painter?' Frank said, 'No, because you are a good sculptor now.' That's really my formal education…. the company of artists is the great education. We educate each other. I've learned from older, wiser people by the old Greek method of sitting down and drinking with them. And that's how I received my education.”

Carl Andre (1935) American artist

Source: Artists talks 1969 – 1977, p. 27 - quote referring to his close art-friend, American Minimal Art artist Frank Stella

People , Education , School , Way

“Already at the age of 21 I played the complete organ works of Bach - and this by memory. As a child and youngster I had been taught by one of the last master-students of the legendary Helmut Walcha, and I completely had been affected by this style of insight into Bach and the internal structures. This method of regarding the independent coherence of all the voices gave me a special comprehension of Bach and his philosophy. Lastly one can say that I have been growing up with Bach, even to this day. If you understand the free organ works (preludes, toccatas, fugues), the chorales, and especially the trio sonatas, you have an insight into Bach that others don’t have. Especially the soloistic and independent leadings of the three voices of the trio sonatas is artistically the major aim of an organist; and already the Orgelbüchlein, the part 5 of the Peters Edition, shows Bach in all his structural and emotional effects. Albert Schweitzer described the Orgelbüchlein as something where the tonal speech of Bach is unbeatable. The comprehension of the organ-Bach is an understanding of the counterpoint and the polyphonic structures, and the coherence of Bach himself.”

Burkard Schliessmann classical pianist

Talkings on Bach

Age , Understanding , Memory , Parting

“You [Dutch Zero-artist, Henk Peeters] take the North of Europe, I'll take the South. Switzerland will be our neutral zone where we shall have our common exhibition. (Manzoni's reaction when Henk Peeters accused him of plagiary]”

Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) Italian artist

Source: De Tweede Helft', Ad de Visser, 1998, p. 161

“Artists who seek perfection in everything are those who cannot attain it in anything.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

Les artistes qui cherchent la perfection en tout sont ceux qui ne peuvent l'atteindre en aucune partie.
Quote, 4 March 1858, from Journal de Eugène Delacroix, book 3
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Perfection

“The artist is obliged to invent the self who will paint his pictures.”

Harold Rosenberg (1906–1978) American writer and art critic

Source: Art & Other Serious Matters, (1985), p. 191, "Saul Steinberg"

Painting

“An artist is a socially unattractive person whom socially attractive people make money out of.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Money , People , Personality

“In the works I paint [now] I can't see any guarantee that I shall make progress.... while better skilled people [artists] - even though their work does not seem so good at the moment - can move forward much more easily.”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

translation from the original Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
Er is in wat ik maak geen waarborg, dat ik vooruit zal gaan.. ..terwijl beter geschoolde lui, ook al lijkt hun werk op het ogenblik niet zoo goed, veel eer, verder kunnen komen.
Breitner, quoted by Jan Veth, in Portretstudies en silhouetten, J. Veth; Amsterdam 1908, p. 204
Jan Veth is remembering Breitner's remark from an earlier walk they made together
1900 - 1923

People , Painting

“Of course, we need not be surprised if artistic excellence goes unrecognized on account of being unknown; but there should be the greatest indignation when, as often, good judges are flattered by the charm of social entertainments into an approbation which is a mere a pretence.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Introduction, Sec. 3
De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book III

“Ambitious young women today are taught to ignore or suppress every natural instinct, if it conflicts with the feminist agenda posed on them. All literary and artistic works, no matter how great, that document the ambivalence of female sexuality they are trained to dismiss as “misogynous.” In other words, their minds are being programmed to secede from their bodies … there is a huge gap between feminist rhetoric and women’s actual sex lives, where feminism is of little help except with a certain stratum of deferential, malleable, white middle-class men.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Vamps and Tramps (1994), "No Law in the Arena: A Pagan Theory of Sexuality", p. 31

Women , Men , Sex , Nature

“Indeed, gaiety is singularly lacking everywhere in Russia. What is intense and joyful goes into pioneer work and not into amusement. Only in the company of young communists and artists can one find stimulation.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "The New Russia" 1928, p. 32

“It takes only one man to make an artist, but forty to make an Academician.”

Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) English illustrator and author

Quoted by Robert Ross in a eulogy. http://www.archive.org/stream/aubreybeardsley00rossrich#page/16/mode/2up

“I remember seeing how Layne [Staley] reacted to Andy [Andrew Wood] dying from drugs, and I think that he was scared possibly. And I think he also reacted the same way when Kurt [Cobain] shot himself. They were really good friends. And yet it didn’t stop him. But for me, if I think about the evolution of my life as it appears in songs for example, Higher Truth is a great example of a record I wouldn’t have been able to write [when I was younger], and part of that is in essence because there was a period of time there where I didn’t expect to be here. And now not only do I expect to be here, and I’m not going anywhere, but I’ve had the last 12 years of my life being free of substances to kind of figure out who the substance-free guy is, because he’s a different guy. Just by brain chemistry, it can’t be avoided. I’m not the same, I don’t think the same, I don’t react the same. And my outlook isn’t necessarily the same. My creative endeavours aren’t necessarily the same. And one of the great things about that is it enabled me to kind of keep going artistically and find new places and shine the light into new corners where I hadn’t really gone before. And that feels really good. But it’s also bittersweet because I can’t help but think, what would Jeff be doing right now, what would Kurt be doing right now, what would Andy be doing? Something amazing, I’m sure of it. And it would be some music that would challenge me to lift myself up, something that would be continually raising the bar so that I would work harder too, in the same way they affected me when they were alive basically.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

When asked if there was a lesson to be learned from his friends' deaths caused by substance abuse and if it was not enough to scare everyone ** The Life & Times of Chris Cornell, Rolling Stone Australia, 17 September 2015 https://rollingstoneaus.com/music/post/the-life-and-times-of-chris-cornell/2273,
Solo career Era

Life , Truth , Music , Way

“I myself in my work tend to humanize everything, to relate mountains to people, tree trunks to the human body, pebbles to heads & figures, etc… To cut out & make a taboo any organic representational element or human reference & then say the artist has gained freedom, seems as silly as locking yourself up in a small cell & saying 'now I know where I am – this is freedom – freedom from the outside world”

Henry Moore (1898–1986) English artist

critic on the idea of pure Abstract art by Moore
1940 - 1955
Source: 'Unpublished notes' for 'Art and Life', 1941, HMR Archive; as quoted in Henry Moore writings and Conversations, edited by Alan Wilkinson, University of California Press, California 2002, p. 114

People , World , Art , Mountain

“(About Pop Idols) Obviously, it's designed by record company executives who want a cheap success, and they don't want to give money to anybody and they don't want to give contracts, so they've created this world of very bubbly teenagers who want to be "idols" and they think all they have to do is mime quite well and they've made it. … But it's not the problem of the kids, it's the problem of the record companies, because it's just an inexpensive way for them to have so-called, I won't say "artists", but erm…You're nodding, you know what I mean.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

From a radio interview with Janice Long (2002)
In interviews etc., About pop culture

Money , World , Way , Problem

“Art is only a means to life, to the life more abundant. It is not in itself the life more abundant. It merely points the way, something which is overlooked not only by the public, but very often by the artist himself. In becoming an end it defeats itself.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Henry Miller on Writing (1964)

Life , Art , Way

“An artist needs not so much an audience, as to feel a need to answer, a promise to respond…. a good feeling about his art.”

Robert Pinsky (1940) American poet, editor, literary critic, academic.

Poetry and the World, Ecco Press,1988

Art , Feeling

“Lenin is an artist who has worked men, as other artists have worked marble or metals. But men are harder than stone and less malleable than iron. There is no masterpiece. The artist has failed. The task was superior to his capacities.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

Popolo d'Italia (14 July 1920) "The Artificer and the Material," quoted in Mussolini in the Making (1938) by Gaudens Megaro, p. 326
1920s

Men

“There are in the Exhibition some beautiful examples of such lace amongst the productions of other countries as well as of our own. They are made by the united labour of many women. The cost of a piece of lace will consist of:
# The remuneration to the artist who designs the pattern.
# The cost of the raw material.
# The cost of the labour of a large number of women working on it for many months.
Let us compare this with the cost of a piece of statuary, which is undoubtedly of a much higher class of art; it will consist of:
# The remuneration to the artist who makes the model.
# The cost of the raw material.
# The cost of labour, by assistants in cutting the block to the pattern of the model.
# Finishing the statue by the artist himself.
In lace making the skill of the artist is required only for the production of the first example. Every succeeding copy is made by mere labour: each copy may be considered as an individual, and will cost the same amount of time.
In sculpture the three first processes are quite analogous to those in lace-making. But the fourth process requires the taste and judgment of the artist. It is this which causes it to retain its rank amongst the fine arts, whilst lacemaking must still be classed amongst the industrial.”

Charles Babbage (1791–1871) mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable c…

Source: The Exposition of 1851: Views Of The Industry, The Science, and the Government Of England, 1851, p. 49-50

Women , Beauty , Art , Time

“In the artist/theorist tradition of Robert Smithson, Joseph Nechvatal is a pioneer in the field of digital image making who challenges our perceptions of nature by altering conventional notions of space and time, gender, and self… Nechvatal successfully plunged into the depths where art, technology and theory meet.”

Joe Lewis (artist) (1953) American photographer

"Joseph Nechvatal at Universal Concepts Unlimited," in: Art in America Magazine, March 2003. pp.123-124.

Art , Nature , Time

“The problems we face as a world feed off of ignorance and isolation. Art is the indelibly effective medium by which to combat it. Perhaps it is time that we focus less on the art of diplomacy and more on artistic diplomacy.”

Lydia Canaan Lebanese singer-songwriter

From Diplomacy and Art http://diplomatartist.com/diplomacy-art/, a contributer article for Diplomat Artist, October 10, 2015

World , Art , Problem , Time

“Sgt Pepper made me more famous but it did not change me as an artist.”

Peter Blake (1932) British artist

Colin Serjent, "Blake's 08, http://www.catalystmedia.org.uk/issues/nerve9/peter_blake.php Nerve, Autumn 2006
Sgt. Pepper's cover

Change

“.. You know that I think a society of impressionists would be a good thing of the same nature as the Society of the Twelve English Pre-Raphaelites, and I think that it could come into existence. Then I incline to think that the artists would guarantee mutually among themselves a livelihood, each consenting to give a considerable number of pictures to the Society, and that the gains as well as the losses should be taken in common.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

Quote in his letter to brother Theo, from Arles, France, Spring 1888; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 498), p 37
1880s, 1888

Nature , Thinking , Loss

“Who can you blame, parents or their friends or the children? In India every parent wants their child to earn more money and fame than any of their peers, no one wants their child to be set on a cultural journey and do tremendous things like other artists or musicians or sportsman have done. They think the entertainment sector won’t earn them any job or money. I blame the parents. They should inspire their children to pursue their interest along with the regular studies. I feel really sorry about this.”

Hariprasad Chaurasia (1938) Indian bansuri player

On Parents and Passion.
Melodies of Brindavan: Pandit Hariprasad Chourasia

Money , Children , Feeling , Thinking

“That Homeric epic and the earliest Hebrew poetry were the results of long and rich developments should have been apparent to anyone who realizes that artistic perfection is never created ex nihilo.”

Cyrus H. Gordon (1908–2001) American linguist

Introduction
Adventures in the Nearest East (1957)

Perfection

“[artists are people] who employ matter between birth and death. Matter is something to use, not possess.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Karel Appel – the complete sculptures,' (1990) not-paged

Death , People , Birth

“QUESTION: A well-known saying of yours asserts that 'Every man is an artist.' If every man is an artist, then why have art academies and art professors at all?
BEUYS: To be sure, 'every man is an artist' in a general sense: one must be an artist for example, to create self-determination. But at a certain stage in his life every man becomes a specialist in a certain way; one studies chemistry, another sculpture or painting, a third becomes doctor, and so on. For this reason we understandably need special schools.”

Joseph Beuys (1921–1986) German visual artist

Götz Adriani, ‎Joseph Beuys, ‎Winfried Konnertz (1979) Joseph Beuys, life and works. p. 255
1970's

Life , School , Art , Way

“Facing up to the Nazis and the powers of the Nazi state coloured my life as an artist.”

Gustav Metzger (1926–2017) Artist and political activist

Gustav Metzger: 'Destroy, and you create', 2012

Life

“One writes out of one thing only — one's own experience. Everything depends on how relentlessly one forces from this experience the last drop, sweet or bitter, it can possibly give. This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.”

James Baldwin (1924–1987) (1924-1987) writer from the United States

Autobiographical Notes (1952)

Life , Art , Dependency

“People say, “Artist, study nature!” But it is no small matter to develop what is noble out of what is common, beauty out of what lacks form.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) German writer, artist, and politician

Man sagt: „Studire, Künstler, die Natur!”
Es ist aber keine Kleinigkeit, aus dem Gemeinen das Edle, aus der Unform das Schöne zu entwickeln.
Maxim 191, trans. Stopp
Maxims and Reflections (1833)

People , Beauty , Nature , Study

“Thoughts have some characteristics of fancy, of freedom, even of unreality, which are wanting to the prosaicness of heavy material things. Thoughts sport with the relations of time and space; they fly in a moment across the gulf between the most distant objects; they travel back up the course of time; they bring near to us events centuries away; they conceive objects which are unreal; they imagine combinations which upset all physical laws, and, further, these conceptions remain invisible to others as well as to ourselves. They are outside the grip of reality, and constitute a world which becomes, for any one with the smallest imagination, as great and as important as the world called real. One may call in evidence the poets, novelists, artists, and the dreamers of all kinds. When life becomes too hard for us, we fly to the ideal world, there to seek forgetfulness or compensation.”

Alfred Binet (1857–1911) French psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test

Source: The Mind and the Brain, 1907, p. 76

Life , World , Law , Travel

“Artists aren't necessarily business people. And they aren't necessarily aware of all the things that go on in their names. Some just want to make some music, but there is a lot of greed among artists as well. Whether or not we know it, we are all to blame. I think it's time — starting with the artist — to try to be a little more responsible and aware of what goes on in our name.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

People , Music , Business , Thinking

“damn gentlemen, there is not such a set of enemies to a real artist in the world as they are, if not kept at a proper distance.... They think (and so may you for a while) that they reward your merit by their Company and notice.... if they don't stand clear, know that they have but one part worth looking at, and that is their Purse; their Hearts are seldom near enough the right place to get a sight of it..”

Thomas Gainsborough (1727–1788) English portrait and landscape painter

Quote from Gainsborough's letter to his friend William Jackson of Exeter, from Bath, 2 Sept 1767; as cited in Thomas Gainsborough, by William T, Whitley https://ia800204.us.archive.org/6/items/thomasgainsborou00whitrich/thomasgainsborou00whitrich.pdf; New York, Charles Scribner's Sons – London, Smith, Elder & Co, Sept. 1915, p. 380 (Appendix A - Letter II)
1755 - 1769

World , Thinking , Heart , Parting

“Works of art are analytic propositions. That is, if viewed within their context – as art – they provide no information whatsoever about any matter of fact. A work of art is a tautology in that it is a presentation of the artist’s intention, that is, he is saying that that particular work of art is art, which means, is a definition of art.”

Joseph Kosuth (1945) American conceptual artist

Art after Philosophy, 1969

Art

“In European thought in general, as contrasted with American, vigor, life and originality have a kind of easy, professional utterance. American — on the other hand, is expressed in an eager amateurish way. A European gives a sense of scope, of survey, of consideration. An American is strained, sensational. One is artistic gold; the other is bullion.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

Journal entry (9 April 1906); as published in Letters of Wallace Stevens (1966) edited by Holly Stevens

Life , Way , Sense

“The digital revolution changed my process early on in terms of technique, but my early analog drawings and paintings had the same thematic intention as my latest digital work: the attempt to conjure, or render, a glimpse into an enigmatically layered and lively world that I sense and know to be reality, an energetic vibratory world of almost dreadful depth. In this respect, my process of making computer-robotic assisted paintings and animations have, until recently, been made up of an excessive concoction of ambiguous sexual body parts (morphed from both sexes) tied to the viral form. Philosophy has been, and is, a way of freeing myself enough to connect with this depth so as to process the phantasmagorical aspects of reality into art. This process of art making, for me, must hinge on a dynamic engagement and then wedding of image production and image resistance. The idea is to encourage subversive readings of computational media by presenting an artistic consciousness that articulates contemporary concerns regarding safety, truth, identity and objectivity.”

Joseph Nechvatal (1951) American artist

" An Interview with Joseph Nechvatal http://versejunkies.com/?p=6110#," at versejunkies.com. Posted On 10 August 2013.

Truth , World , Art , Sex

“It must be said that an authentic work of art needs no philosophical justification. In principle, if Philosophical Treatises could explain a work of art then there would be no justification for the existence of that work art. Put it differently, a work of art precisely enters into the scene when philosophy and other experimental sciences are inept of representing or elucidating an artistic vision.”

Guity Novin (1944) artist

Dialogues on enlightenment and reason (2013)

Art , Science

“All of us have an artist inside us. It's part of our DNA as human beings. We have all witnessed the power of the arts to deeply connect people, to open our minds to new ideas and express our innermost sacred selves. The imagination isn't just simply reserved for children. The imagination can be, for all of us, a very real gateway to joy, understanding, liberation and peace.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Speech at The Dalai Lama Public Talk, University of Illinois at Chicago Pavilion, Chicago, Illinois (17 July 2011) http://www.jennifer-beals.com/media/speeches/dalailama.html.

Children , People , Peace , Art

“Copy nature and you infringe on the work of our Lord. Interpret nature and you are an artist.”

Jacques Lipchitz (1891–1973) American and French sculptor

Jacques Lipchitz cited in: Bernard S. Raskas (1976). Living thoughts: inspiration, insight, and wisdom from sources throughout the ages. p. 22; Quoted in: William Safire, ‎Leonard Safir (1990). Words of Wisdom. p. 34

Nature

“But there was a strong bond between us artistes in the old days. I remember when Siddheshwari Devi was laid in bed with paralysis, we went to meet her and asked her if she needed help. She asked me to sing Bhairavi for her. She listened with tears in her eyes.”

Gangubai Hangal (1913–2009) Indian singer

In "On Gangubai Hangal by Sabina Sehgal Computer Science & Engineering - University of Washington".

Tear , Strong , Singing , Help

“It's hard to be creative and it's also hard not to think what you do is creative or hard not to be called creative because everybody is always talking about that and individuality. Everybody's always creative. And it is so funny when you say things aren't, like the shoe I would draw for an advertisement was called a 'creation', but the drawing of it was not... There are millions of actors. They're all pretty good. And how many painters are there? Millions of painters and all pretty good. How can you say one style is better then another. You ought to be able to be an Abstract-expressionist next week, or a Pop artist, or a realist, without feeling you're given up something.”

Andy Warhol (1928–1987) American artist

Source: 1963 - 1967, What Is Pop Art? Interviews with Eight Painters, Part 1 (1963), pp. 116-19

Shoe , Feeling , Thinking , Drawing

“They say that truth is naked. I cannot admit this for any but abstract truths; in the arts, all truths are produced by methods which show the hand of the artist.”

Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) French painter

12 October 1859 (p. 388)
1831 - 1863, Delacroix' 'Journal' (1847 – 1863)

Truth , Art

“The Greeks were the classicists of antiquity, and they are still today the preeminent classicists. What marked all they did, the classic stamp, is a direct simplicity in expressing the significance of actual life. It was there the Greek artists and poets found what they wanted. The unfamiliar and the extraordinary were on the whole repellent to them, and they detested every form of exaggeration. Their desire was to express truthfully what lay at hand, which they saw as beautiful and full of meaning. But that was not the Roman way. When not directly under Greek guidance, the Roman did not perceive beauty in every-day matters, or indeed care to do so. Beauty was unimportant to him. Life in his eyes was a very serious and a very arduous business, and he had no time for what he would have thought of as a mere decoration of it.”

Edith Hamilton (1867–1963) American teacher and writer

Source: The Roman Way (1932), Ch. 10

Life , Beauty , Way , Business

“Right after Andy died, we [Soundgarden] went to Europe, and it was horrible, because I couldn't talk about it, and there was no one who had loved him around. I wrote two songs, "Reach Down" and "Say Hello 2 Heaven". That was pretty much how I dealt with it. When we came back, I recorded them right away. They seemed different from what Soundgarden naturally does, and they seemed to fit together. They seemed like music he would like. I got the idea to release them as a single, and to get at least Stone and Jeff, or all of Love Bone, to play on it. I had the idea for a couple days, then, with an artist's lack of self-confidence, I decided it was a stupid idea. Somehow those guys heard the tape, and they were really, really excited. Stone and Jeff and our drummer, Matt, had been working on a demo for what ended up being Pearl Jam, so we had the idea that we would make an EP or a record, and maybe even do some of Andy's solo songs.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

Temple of the Dog Era

Love , Stupidity , Music , Guy

“Since I was a child, I’ve used my imagination to escape from life. At the same time, my imagination has plagued me with both reality-based anxieties as well as anxieties based entirely in the imagination, such as the fear of Hell I was taught to have by the Catholic Church. Paired with a talent for literary composition, a talent that it took me over ten years to refine, I became a writer of horror stories. To my mind, writing is the most important form of human expression, not only artistic writing but also philosophical writing, critical writing, etc. Art as such, especially programmatic music such as operas, seems trivial to me by comparison, however much pleasure we may get from it. Writing is the most effective way to express and confront the full range of the realities of life. I can honestly say that the primary stature I attach to writing is not self-serving. I’ve been captivated to some degree by all forms of creativity and expression—the visual arts, film, design of any sort, and especially music. In college I veered from literature to music for a few years, which is the main reason it took me six years to get an undergraduate degree in liberal arts. I’ve loved music for as long as I can remember. Since my instrument is the guitar, I know every form and style in its history and have written the classical, acoustic, and electric forms of this instrument. I think because I have had such a love and understanding of music do I realize, to my grief, its limitations. Writing is less limited in the consolations it offers to those who have lost a great deal in their lives. And it continues to console until practically everything in a person’s life has been lost. Words and what they express have the best chance of returning the baneful stare of life.”

Thomas Ligotti (1953) American horror author

Wonderbook Interview with Thomas Ligotti http://wonderbooknow.com/interviews/thomas-ligotti/

Love , Life , Pleasure , Fear

“Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.”

Kenneth Tynan (1927–1980) English theatre critic and writer

From Dada Manifesto 1918 (23 March 1918) by Tristan Tzara
Misattributed

Art , Understanding , Strong

“If we give the attributes of a medium to the artist, we must then deny him the state of consciousness on the aesthetic plane about what he is doing or why he is doing it. All this decisions in the artistic execution of the work rest with pure intuition and cannot be translated into a self-analysis, spoken or written, or even thought out.”

Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) French painter and sculptor

1951 - 1968, The Creative Act', 1957

Decision

“I don't look myself as an artist, but as a hard-worker musician. And to be honest, a soft hard-worker, as hard-worker is the one at the factories, harbours. But I always say that I look myself as one of them.”

Osvaldo Pugliese (1905–1995) Argentine pianist, tango composer

Unsourced

“It is a false idea that drawing in itself can be beautiful. It is only beautiful through the truths and the feelings that it translates. The crowd admires artists, who, strong in subject, elegantly pen contours destitute of significance, and who plant their figures in pretentious poses. It goes into ecstasies over poses which are never seen in nature, and which are considered artistic because they recall the posturings of the Italian models who offer themselves at the studio door. That is what is generally called beautiful drawing. It is really only sleight-of-hand, fit to astonish boobies.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. V. Drawing and Color, p. 95-96

Truth , Beauty , Feeling , Idea

“That terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald (13 September 1929); published in Ernest Hemingway: Selected Letters 1917–1961 (1981) edited by Carlos Baker

Mood

“Modern physics has thus revealed that every subatomic particle not only performs an energy dance, but also is an energy dance; a pulsating process of creation and destruction. The dance of Shiva is the dancing universe, the ceaseless flow of energy going through an infinite variety of patterns that melt into one another’’. For the modern physicists, then Shiva’s dance is the dance of subatomic matter. As in Hindu mythology, it is a continual dance of creation and destruction involving the whole cosmos; the basis of all existence and of all natural phenomenon. Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our times, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance.”

Fritjof Capra book The Tao of Physics

Source: The Tao of Physics (1975), p. 244.

Beauty , Nature , Universe , Time

“I blur things to make everything equally important and equally unimportant. I blur things so that they do not look artistic or craftsmanlike but technological, smooth and perfect. I blur things to make all the parts a closer fit. Perhaps I also blur out the excess of unimportant information.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Notes, 1964-65; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Techniques' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/techniques-5
1960's

Parting , Perfection

“But you begin to feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all - or is not even possible. The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

1961 - 1980, ARTnews Annual', October 1966

Art , Feeling , Painting

“As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something not entirely congenial in the child's nature, it alternately sparkled and grew dim. At length it arose from the small hand of the infant with an airy motion that seemed to bear it upward without an effort, as if the ethereal instincts with which its master's spirit had endowed it impelled this fair vision involuntarily to a higher sphere. Had there been no obstruction, it might have soared into the sky and grown immortal. But its lustre gleamed upon the ceiling; the exquisite texture of its wings brushed against that earthly medium; and a sparkle or two, as of stardust, floated downward and lay glimmering on the carpet.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Nature , Effort

“I still think that Boccioni was a great artist and a passionate man. I like El Lissitsky's painting very much. But Mondrian that great merciless artist, is the only one who had nothing left over. The point they all had in common was to be both inside and outside at the same time. A new of likeness!... for me to be inside and outside is to be in an unheated studio with broken windows in the winter.”

Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) Dutch painter

De Kooning's speech 'What Abstract Art means to me' on the symposium 'What is Abstract At' - at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, 5 February, 1951, n.p.
1950's

Thinking , Passion , Winter , Time

“[the double line in his paintings] is still one line, as in the case of your grooves [= the wide sunken lines in the relief's, the artist Gorin made then]... In my last things the double line widens to form a plane, and yet it remains a line. Be that as it may, I believe that this question is one of those which lie beyond the realm of theory, and which are of such subtlety that they are rooted in the mystery of 'art.”

Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) Peintre Néerlandais

But all that is not yet clear in my mind.
Quote in Mondrian's letter to artist Gorin, [who stated that the double line broke the necessary symmetry], 31 January, 1934; as quoted in Mondrian, - The Art of Destruction, Carel Blotkamp, Reaktion Books LTD. London 2001, p. 215
1930's

Lie , Art , Question , Painting

“This afternoon I had put myself down on this sweet spot, very tired of painting [with a view of the old castle of Vorden].... I was completely immersed in thinking of You... I would rather like to.... thank you, dear and beloved Lady, for the right judgments and remarks which You gave me in this [your? ] sweet letter. I solemnly promise you that I will use them for my benefit, and will spent all my powers as an artist, to make your attentions more worthy to me.”

Johannes Warnardus Bilders (1811–1890) painter from the Northern Netherlands

translation from Dutch, Fons Heijnsbroek
version in original Dutch (citaat van Johannes Warnardus Bilders' brief, in het Nederlands:) Toen ik heden middag mij zeer vermoeid van 't schilderen op dit lieve plekje had neder gezet [met zicht op het oude kasteel van Vorden].. ..ik was namelijk geheel verdiept in de gedachte aan UE.. .Ik wil liever.. ..bedenken, hoe ik U veel beminde juffrouw, dank zou zeggen, voor de juiste oordeelvellingen en bemerkingen, welke UE mij in dit [uw[?] lieve schrijven gemaakt heb, Ik beloof u plechtig dat ik ze mij ten nutte zal maken, en al mijn krachten als kunstenaar zal in spannen, om uwe atenties mij meer waardig te maken.
J.W. Bilders, in his letter [including a sketch by pen of the landscape with the castle, seen from the garden of the hotel where he stayed] to Georgina van Dijk van 't Velde, from Vorden, 1 Sept. 1868; from an excerpt of the letter https://rkd.nl/nl/explore/excerpts/751236 in the RKD-Archive, The Hague
1860's + 1870's

Thinking , Painting

“They [Jawlensky and Münter] often lived here in our Murnau house. But Paul Klee and Franz Marc were also close friends, and August Macke, too, whenever he was in Munich... Klee was never as active a theorist, in those years, as Kandinsky or Marianne de Werefkin. Besides, it took Klee much longer to become a truly and conscious modern artist... As you can see in my portrait of Klee, which is painted in 1913 – I mean the one where he is seen seated in one of the rooms here downstairs and wearing white summer slacks – he is not very communicative. That is why I depicted him all hunched up and tense, as if he were constraining some mainspring within himself. In my eyes, it was almost a portrait of silence rather than of Klee, and for many years it no longer occurred to me that he had been my model. But Klee was always a close friend of ours, and Kandinsky and I had great confidence in his talent and his future.”

Gabriele Münter (1877–1962) German painter

Source: Interview by Edouard Roditi (1958), p. 120

Confidence , Communication , Silence , Future

“Mayor Helen Zille has shrugged off the news that her portrait has been painted by an 'artist' who uses his penis as a brush, saying it is his constitutional right to exercise his freedom of expression 'in this unusual way.”

Pricasso (1949) Australian painter

[Cape Argus staff, Artist uses a different stroke on Zille portrait, Cape Argus, South Africa, 7 May 2008, 3, Independent Online]
About

Way , Exercises , Freedom , Painting

“If my works are good and of any importance for the further development of our art, they will maintain their position in spite of all opposition on the part of critics, and in spite of all denigration of my artistic intentions. If they are worthtless, not even the most gratifying box office success or the most enthusiastic acclamation of augurs will keep them alive. Let the pulping press devour them…I shall not shed a tear over their grave.”

Richard Strauss (1864–1949) German composer and orchestra director

On Criticism (page 21-2) (1908).
Recollections and Reflections

Art , Tear , Success , Parting

“Imagine, 24 pages of superhero adventures produced by the same writer and artist every month!! How did they do it?”

John Byrne (1950) American author and artist of comic books

What? By being professional about it? But that's too much like work!
2008
http://www.byrnerobotics.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26500&PN=1&totPosts=7
Monthly comics and creator's ability to keep on schedule

Imagination

“But your sign says you can conjure up ever-filled purses,” Holger began.
“Advertising,” Martinus admitted. “Corroborative detail intended to lend artistic verisimilitude.”

Poul Anderson book Three Hearts and Three Lions

Source: Three Hearts and Three Lions (1961), Chapter 17 (p. 162)

“This is a film about — and also for — not only obsessed clerks in record stores, but the video store clerks who have seen all the movies, and the bookstore employees who have read all the books. Also for bartenders, waitresses, greengrocers in health food stores, kitchen slaves at vegetarian restaurants, the people at GNC who know all the herbs, writers for alternative weeklies, disc jockeys on college stations, salespeople in retro clothing shops, tattoo artists and those they tattoo, poets, artists, musicians, novelists, and the hip, the pierced and the lonely. They may not see themselves but they will recognize people they know.”

Roger Ebert (1942–2013) American film critic, author, journalist, and TV presenter

Review of http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/high-fidelity-2000 High Fidelity (31 March 2000)
Reviews, Four star reviews

People , Health , Books , Food

“It was not the inexperienced art public that became American Scenists. It was the artists themselves, a highly sophisticated group, thoroughly familiar with the art work and the art traditions of the world, who had flocked to Paris to participate in the great cultural center, who were very conscious of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists revolutions, who fell for this propaganda [to strive for a pure national American art]. It is upon them that responsibility falls. Their support of this reactionary philistinism is an inexcusable betrayal... It is time for the artists to wake up and re-examine their aesthetic foundations; to rid themselves of the millstone that has made art in America an expensive picture postcard-factory... It is time that artists refused isolationist money, repudiated the art dealers, the favor of the museum directors. It is time artists forgot about success..”

Barnett Newman (1905–1970) American artist

Quote of 1942; in Barnett Newman', by Thomas B. Hess, museum of Modern art, New York 1971; as cited in Abstract Expressionism: Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 124-125
1940 - 1950

Money , World , Art , Support

“"But this would be a beautiful place for a fight," he began again persuasively. "These great bare rolling Downs for the arena, — and me in my golden armour showing up against your big blue scaly coils! Think what a picture it would make!"
"Now you're trying to get at me through my artistic sensibilities," said the dragon. "But it won't work. Not but what it would make a very pretty picture, as you say," he added, wavering a little.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Reluctant Dragon

Dream Days (1898), The Reluctant Dragon

Beauty , Thinking , Fight

“Now to the great artist, everything in nature has character.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Rodin on realism, 1910

Nature

“Only when the habit of one's consciousness to see in paintings bits of nature, Madonna's and shameless nudes.... has disappeared, shall we see a pure painting composition. I have transformed myself into the nullity of forms and pulled myself out of the circle of things, out of the circle-horizon in which the artist and forms of nature are locked.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

as quoted in: Marc Chagall, – a Biography, Sidney Alexander, Cassell, London, 1978, p. 178
1910 - 1920

Nature , Painting

“Now, to the great artist, everything in nature has character; for the unswerving directness of his observation searches out the hidden meaning of all things. And that which is considered ugly in nature often presents more character than that which is termed beautiful, because in the contractions of a sickly countenance, in the lines of a vicious face, in all deformity, in all decay, the inner truth shines forth more clearly than in features that are regular and healthy.”

Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French sculptor

Source: Art, 1912, Ch. II. To the artist, all in nature is beautiful, p. 46

Truth , Beauty , Search , Nature

“[While filming 'Ashes to Ashes'] So we're on the beach shooting this scene with a giant bulldozer. The camera was on a very long lens. [The camera is along way away, but the artist fills the frame] In this video I'm dressed from head to toe in a clown suit. Why not. I hear playback and the music starts. So off I go, I start singing and walking, but as soon as I do this old geezer with an old dog walk right between me and the camera… Well, knowing this is gonna take a while I walked past the old guy and sat next to camera in my full costume waiting for him to pass. As he is walking by camera the director said, excuse me Mr do you know who this is? The old guy looks at me from bottom to top and looks back to the director and said… "Of course I do!!!! its some cunt in a clown suit."”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

That was a huge moment for me, It put me back in my place and made me realize, yes I'm just a cunt in a clown suit. I think about that old guy all the time.
http://tonythegigguy.com/queen-bitch-beat-city-bowie-special-sleeve-notes

Dogs , Music , Way , Guy

“Kandinsky wants to organize a new society of artists. I came to feel a deep trust in him [ Kandinsky ]. He is somebody, and has an exceptionally beautiful and lucid mind.”

Paul Klee (1879–1940) German Swiss painter

Quote from Diaries III, 1911; as quoted by Enric Jardi, Paul Klee, Rizzoli Intl Pubns, 1991 - ISBN 0-8478-1343-6, p 12
In Autumn 1911 Klee made an acquaintance with August Macke and Kandinsky, and in winter he joined the editorial team of the almanac Der Blaue Reiter. After meeting Kandinsky in Munch, Klee recorded this.
1911 - 1914

Beauty , Feeling

“Before the blank canvas, the unrealized work, completely in the artist’s head, must seem to him equal to the greatest. To say that which has never been said – is the reason for all artistic work. But only outside of the work should the artist worthily get down on his knees before the great artists of the past... Rembrandt in our days would be Rembrandt again, because the work of the master is his self. But in order to be Rembrandt in our days, he would have used new ways that would give a new culture.”

Marianne von Werefkin (1860–1938) expressionist painter

Vol. 1: 'My beautiful One, My Unique!', pp. 130-140
1895 - 1905, Lettres à un Inconnu, 1901 – 1905; Museo Communale, Ascona

Way , Past

“The passions are a kind of thirst, inexorable and intense, for certain feelings or felt states. To find or invent 'objects' (which are, more strictly speaking, relational structures) whose felt quality satisfies the passions, - that for me is the activity of the artist, an activity which does not cease even in sleep. No wonder the artist is constantly placing and displacing, relating and rupturing relations; his task is to find a complex of qualities whose feeling is just right – veering toward the unknown and chaos, yet ordered and related in order to be apprehended.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Source: 1940's, Beyond the Aesthetics (1946), pp. 38-39

Feeling , Sleep , Passion

“No, you cannot expect people to understand the higher reaches of philosophy. Culture should be taken out of the hands of the dollar chasers. We need a national subsidy for literature. It is disgraceful that artists are treated like peddlers and that art works have to be sold like soap.”

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979) German philosopher, sociologist, and political theorist

Negations: Essays in Critical Theory (1968)

People , Art , Literature , Understanding

“The effects of Asian contacts on Europe, though considerably less, cannot be considered insignificant. The growth of capitalism in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in itself a profound and revolutionary change, is intimately connected with the expansion of European trade and business into Asia. The political development of the leading Western European nations during this period was also related to their exploitation of their Asian possessions and the wealth they derived from the trade with and government of their Eastern dependencies. Their material life, as reflected in clothing, food, beverages, etc., also bears permanent marks of their Eastern contacts. We have already dealt briefly with the penetration of cultural, artistic and philosophical influences, though their effects cannot still be estimated. Unlike the Rococo movement of the eighteenth century, the spiritual and cultural reactions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries are deeper, and have not yet fully come to the surface. The influence of Chinese literature and of Indian philosophical thought, to mention only two trends which have become important in recent years, cannot be evaluated for many years to come. Yet it is true, as T. S. Eliot has stated, that most modern poets in Europe have in some measure been influenced by the literature of China. Equally the number of translations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads, which have been appearing every year, meant not for Orientalists and scholars but for the educated public, and the revival of interest in the religious experience of India, are sufficient to prove that a penetration of European thought by Oriental influences is now taking place which future historians may consider to be of some significance.”

K. M. Panikkar (1895–1963) Indian diplomat, academic and historian

Asia and Western Dominance: a survey of the Vasco Da Gama epoch of Asian history, 1498–1945

Life , Education , Food , Literature

“We desire to achieve to the socialist republic not only the recovery of the conditions of art, but also the beginning of a unified artistic area for our time.”

Max Pechstein (1881–1955) German artist

As quoted in German Expressionist Painting, Peter Selz, University of California Press, 1974, p. 313
Pechstein and others initiated in Nov. 1918 in Berlin the Novembergruppe, a socialist artist-group, competing then with Die Brücke

Art , Time

“Don't regard my characters as symbols of a determined society. See them as something that sparks a reaction within you so that they become a personal experience. The critic is a spectator and an artist insofar as he transforms the work into a personal thing of his own.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

Encountering Directors interview (1969)

Personality

“There's no particular complex that I have about acting in a Hollywood movie if offered. Some would say there's a lot here in our industry for us to go there and suck up to them. I don't consider it sucking up. If I am offered a blink and you miss appearance in a Hollywood film starring Brando, De Niro, Pacino or Nicholson, where I just have to go and hand a suitcase to them, I would simply do it out of sheer veneration for these great and renowned artists. And yes, despite all my success and fame in our industry and nation. There's no vanity I harbour in my mind in order to do that.”

Amitabh Bachchan (1942) Indian actor

Quotable quotes by Amitabh Bachchan.

Star , Appearance , Success

“Encouraged, we recognise the importance of living artistically, aesthetically and creatively as creative creatures of the creator.”

Edith Schaeffer (1914–2013) American writer

The Hidden Art of Homemaking: Creative Ideas for Enriching Everyday Life (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1972, ISBN 978-0842313988

“In the next episode you’ll see two people draw a picture of an angel and notice when they do that they draw the angel from a particularly secular perspective. And I’m certainly not one to begin to criticise the religio-artistic viewpoint of my two charming volunteers but it does make you stop and think what spiritually vacuous times we live in when two young people instinctively draw an angel with a halo attached to the back of its head with a stick.”

Derren Brown (1971) British illusionist

Other TV and web appearances, E4 Mind Control Night

People , Angels , Thinking , Time

“To arrive at such a discovery, fruit of a log and precious education, involves a whole field of precise technique. The artist must immerse himself in his own anxiety, dredging up everything that is alien, imposed or personal in the derogatory sense, in order to arrive at the authentic zone of values.”

Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) Italian artist

Source: For the Discovery of a Zone of Images', Piero Manzoni, 1957, pp. 18-19

Education , Sense , Personality

“You are right to demand that an artist engage his work consciously, but you confuse two different things: solving the problem and correctly posing the question.”

Anton Chekhov (1860–1904) Russian dramatist, author and physician

Letter to A.S. Suvorin (October 27, 1888)
Letters

Question , Problem

“Journeys, like artists, are born and not made. A thousand differing circumstances contribute to them, few of them willed or determined by the will—whatever we may think.”

Lawrence Durrell book Bitter Lemons

Bitter Lemons (1957)

Thinking

“I'm looking for what the artist is trying to say and what he or she is actually saying, what the work reveals about society and the timeless conditions of being alive.”

Jerry Saltz (1951) American art historian

Source: Thornton, Sarah. Seven Days in the Art World. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. 2008. p. 174–75 : Saltz on his approach to criticism

“Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, abstract painting, are only names given to a change which our artistic thinking wants to make and is thinking. Nobody has ever painted fallen raindrops suspended in the air, they've always been depicted as streaks (even the cave-men drew herds of reindeer in the same way). Now people are painting cabs rattling, lights flickering, people dancing, all-in the same way (this is how we all see movement). That is thew whole frightfully simple secret of Futurism. Its very easy to prove its artistic feasibility, for all the philosophizing that has been raised against it. Space, surface and time are different things, which ought not to be mixed together, is the continuous cry. If only it were possible to separate them. I can't do it.”

August Macke (1887–1914) German painter of the expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter

in a letter to philosopher de:Eberhard Grisebach, March 1913; as quoted by de:Wolf-Dieter Dube, in Expressionism; Praeger Publishers, New York, 1973, pp. 144-45

Men , People , Secret , Way

“Ladislao de Gauss significantly marks the local scene both as a portraitist and as a landscape artist…”

Tonko Maroević (1941)

Source: Ladislao de Gauss, una monografia per riscoprire un pittore dimenticato http://www.museorevoltella.it/news.php?id_news=488, museorevoltella.it, July 15th 2010.

“Cultural confinement takes place when a curator imposes his own limits on an art exhibition, rather than asking an artist to set his limits. Artists are expected to fit into fraudulent categories. Some artists imagine they've got a hold on this apparatus, which in fact has got a hold of them. As a result, they end up supporting a cultural prison that is out of their control.”

Robert Smithson (1938–1973) American artist

Cultural Confinement, 1972

Art , Imagination , Support

“Rimbaud has epitomized for me the true function of the artist when he wrote: 'The poet should define the quantity of the unknown which awakes in his time, in the universal soul. He should give more than the formula of his thought, than the annotation of his march toward progress. The enormous becoming the normal, when absorbed by everyone, he would really be a multiplication of progress.”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Quote of Gorky, in his text 'My murals for the Newark Airport: an interpretation', Arshile Gorky, 1936
1930 - 1941

Soul , Universe , Time

“The better artists are original and obdurate; they're the gravel in the pea soup. ln Jackson Pollock's painting the particularity, the immediacy, is the dripped paint, which remains dripped paint as a phenomenon, for all the beauty of the small shapes it makes it makes. The generality is in the scale or proportion and in the large shapes. It’s in the appearance of chaos. The gesture or the motion shown in the application of the paint varies from painting to painting from the particular to a middling generality. The size and the color generally occur in the middle between particularity and generality. At the same time as Pollock and since, almost all first-rate art has been based on an immediate phenomenon, for example the work of Dan Flavin and Larry Bell.”

Donald Judd (1928–1994) artist

Donald Judd (1987) Complete writings, 1975-1986. p. 35 : Cited in: Marjanovic, Marianne Berger. "To build new ways of talking about the work": Hovedbegreper i Donald Judds kunstteori." (2005).
1980

Beauty , Art , Color , Appearance

“Not every painter has a gift for painting, in fact, many painters are disappointed when they meet with difficulties in art. Painting done under pressure by artists without the necessary talent can only give rise to formlessness, as painting is a profession that requires peace of mind. The painter must always seek the essence of things, always represent the essential characteristics and emotions of the person he is painting..”

Titian (1488–1576) Italian painter

As quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 71.
As quoted in The Quotable Artist (2002) by Peggy Hadden, p. 72.
undated quotes
Variant: They who are compelled to paint by force, without being in the necessary mood, can produce only ungainly works, because this profession requires an unruffled temper.

Peace , Art , Disappointment , Painting

“An artist must be man, woman and demi-god.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mr. Wharton in Ch. IV
Esther: A Novel (1884)

God

Quotes about artist page 8

Quotes about artist
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