Artist Quotes - Page 130

It is for the artist... in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.

The masterpiece should appear as the flower to the painter - perfect in its bud as in its bloom - with no reason to explain its presence - no mission to fulfill - a joy to the artist, a delusion to the philanthropist - a puzzle to the botanist - an accident of sentiment and alliteration to the literary man.

A student of James McNeill Whistler tells the great artist, 'I tend to paint what I see.' Whistler replies, 'Ah! The shock will come when you see what you paint!

The aim of the poet, or other artist, is first to make something; and it's impossible to make something out of words and not communicate

The only thing an artist has to remember is to never lose faith in his vision.

And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.

The artist who could disentangle the subtle soul of the image from its mesh of defining circumstances most exactly and 're-embody' it in artistic circumstances chosen as the most exact for it in its new office, he was the supreme artist.

When I was a young actor, I just didn’t understand how to function in this business as an artist. It is a business, it’s called the film business for a reason, there’s money involved ... But on the flip side, now I do not let the business side of it rule either. It’s a balance.

I put out a lot of different kinds of material, and maybe people read that as egotistical. Or maybe, since a lot of it does involve some aspect of me, they find it self-aggrandizing. But there’s a long tradition of artists using themselves. Look, I know I’m not perfect. And, who knows, maybe a part of it has to do with self-obsession. But it’s also about using this weird thing that is a public persona as raw material for creative projects.

If paintings are so important - worth so much, reproduced, cherished, and visited so often - then isn't it troubling that we can hardly make emotional contact with the artists? Few centuries, it seems, are as determinedly tearless as ours.

In the context of a question regarding what an artist might be, I would want to raise the question of what a theorist might be, to signal how inextricably linked these existences and practices might be.

My mother was a housewife but she was also an artist. My father was an electrical engineer.

Some artists shrink from self-awareness, fearing that it will destroy their unique gifts and even their desire to create. The truth of the matter is quite opposite.

The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.

By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.

The artist who imagines that he puts his best into a portrait in order to produce something good, which will be a pleasure to the sitter and to himself, will have some bitter experiences.

The artist is the world's scapegoat.

I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting.

I don't paint nature. I am nature.

I was lucky enough to first meet Elvis at his house in Bel Air and he used to invite different artists, singers and musicians, to come and jam with him at his house.

I dislike the word 'emerging artist.' Emerging connotes to me an alligator coming up from the water. I consider all artists to be artists, not rising, emerging, amateur, beginning, but the real thing.

He was one of those inexplicable gifts of nature, an artist who leaps over boundaries, changes our nervous systems, creates a new language, transmits new kinds of joy to our startled senses and spirits.

The artist, surgeon, through clay form, can only look for cure with great obstinacy until he discovers, repeatedly, that love is god's only gift that enables man to transcend his tragedy and regain his wholeness and well-being beyond the claws of evil, rampaging as evil may be.

If the function of the artist is to see, the first duty of the critic is to understand what the artist saw.

In Paris, it used to feel like you were living in a museum. As beautiful as it was, it's still limited. But here you have just everything.