Artist Quotes

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion.

In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression.

The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous.

A true artist is someone who gives birth to a new reality.

The artist spends the first part of his life with the dead, the second with the living, and the third with himself.

A famous writer who wants to continue writing has to be constantly defending himself against fame.

The best art is about individualism, free self-expression and realising a unique, imaginative perspective- A true artist takes no notice whatever of the public. The public are to him non-existent.

Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. ...Art is the most intense mode of Individualism that the world has known. I am inclined to say that it is the only real mode of Individualism that the world has known. ...Art is Individualism.

The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself.

Those who create are hard of heart.

A true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art.

The artist's role isn't to tell people how to feel, but reflect.

I cannot marry the facts of William Shakespeare to his verse: Other men had led lives in some sort of keeping with their thought, but this man is in wide contrast.

The moment that an artist takes notice of what other people want, and tries to supply the demand, he ceases to be an artist.

The fate of the architect is the strangest of all. How often he expends his whole soul, his whole heart and passion, to produce buildings into which he himself may never enter.

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.

... everyone's free to embark on either a great clipper or a little fishing boat. An artist is an explorer who oughtn't to shrink from anything: it doesn't matter whether he goes to the left or the right -- his goal sanctifies all.

I am only a public entertainer who understands his time.

A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament.

The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web.

Perhaps the mission of an artist is to interpret beauty to people - the beauty within themselves.

A real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render...the 'radiance' of all things as an epiphany or showing forth of the truth.

Let them understand above all that the artist works from necessity; that he, too, is a minute element of the world to whom one should ascribe no more importance than so many things in nature which charm us but which we do not explain to ourselves.

If I had the capabilities of being something other than I am, I would. It's no fun being an artist. You know what it's like, writing, it's torture.

There should be a law that no ordinary newspaper should be allowed to write about art. The harm they do by their foolish and random writing it would be impossible to overestimate--not to the artist but to the public.... Without them we would judge a man simply by his work; but at present the newspapers are trying hard to induce the public to judge a sculptor, for instance, never by his statues but by the way he treats his wife; a painter by the amount of his income and a poet by the colour of his necktie.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

You will think less of the art, when you know the artist

It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.

It is hard to separate the art from the artist.

A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures. But inferior poets are absolutely fascinating.

What portion in the world can the artist have, Who has awakened from the common dream, But dissipation and despair?

What a trade! Poor painters! They always wish to be understood, and they are analysed instead.

The only thing that the artist cannot see is the obvious. The only thing that the public can see is the obvious.

It is sometimes said that the tragedy of an artist's life is that he cannot realise his ideal. But the true tragedy that dogs the steps of most artists is that they realise their ideal too absolutely. For, when the ideal is realised, it is robbed of its wonder and its mystery, and becomes simply a new starting-point for an ideal that is other than itself.

In England it is enough for a man to try and produce any serious, beautiful work to lose all his rights as a citizen.

We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth at least the truth that is given us to understand. The artist must know the manner whereby to convince others of the truthfulness of his lies.

Today, as you know, I am famous and very rich. But when I am alone with myself, I haven't the 'courage' to consider myself an artist, in the great and ancient sense of that word... I am only a public entertainer, who understands his age.

What the artist must render is a living moment somehow, a living moment actually in action or an inward experience.

He who draws noble delights from sentiments of poetry is a true poet, though he has never written a line in all his life.

The reason artists show so little interestIn public freedom is because the freedomThey've come to feel the need of is a kindNo one can give them they can scarce attainThe freedom of their own material.

The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. Good artists exist simply in what they make, and consequently are perfectly uninteresting in what they are.

People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all.

Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.

I have only a mind to live, to enjoy - i.e., to work as an artist, and produce my works; but not for the muddy brains of the common herd.

Poets are not so scrupulous as you are. They know how useful passion is for publication. Nowadays a broken heart will run to many editions." "I hate them for it," cried Hallward. "An artist should create beautiful things, but should put nothing of his own life into them. We live in an age when men treat art as if it were meant to be a form of autobiography. We have lost the abstract sense of beauty. Some day I will show the world what is it; and for that the world shall never see my portrait of Dorian Gray.

It's a big error to think that because you like somebody's work, you're going to like him.

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.