Top 57 Original Artist Quotes
#1. The truly original artist invents his own signs.
Henri Matisse
#2. An original artist is unable to copy. So he has only to copy in order to be original.
Jean Cocteau
#3. In terms of covers, it's always nice to do ones that aren't actually getting played by the original artist anymore. I just love the song; I love that band, and it's nice to be able to play it.
Scott Hutchison
#4. The original 'Artist's Way' focused on the nurturing of the self. The 'Artist's Way for Parents' focuses both on nurturing the self and nurturing the children in our care.
Julia Cameron
#5. The effect of studying masterpieces is to make me admire and do otherwise. So it must be on every original artist to some degree, on me to a marked degree.
(from notes on 'Heraclitean Fire')
Gerard Manley Hopkins
#6. I've only covered a few songs because I feel that if you're not going to go beyond the original artist in some way, then don't disrespect what they created.
Dawn Angelique
#7. The reason I put make-up on or wear the costume is to try and find my own style. It's like my guitar style - I'm just trying to be an original artist.
Miyavi
#8. Every artist is linked to a mistake with which he has a particular intimacy. All art draws its origin from an exceptional fault, each work is the implementation of this original fault, from which comes a risky plenitude and new light.
Maurice Blanchot
#9. They[ Lana and Andy Wachowski]are true artists. They really are trying to say something and trying to create something original, and there aren't that many people who do that.
Daryl Hannah
#10. I feel responsible to make something original as a Japanese artist. There are lots of singers and guitarists, but I feel that on stage it's meaningless to copy something someone has done before.
Miyavi
#11. As a general rule, in the world of magic, the most successful magician is the one who has enough patience to keep the secrets of his original magic effects.
Amit Kalantri
#12. What a good artist understands is that nothing comes from nowhere. All creative work builds on what came before. Nothing is completely original.
Austin Kleon
#13. Charlie Chaplin is the greatest artist of the 20th century. He takes me from laughter to tears in seconds. And he was one of the very first funny men. It's like the original violins were made in Cremona and there's never been any better since. Sometimes the best come right off the bat.
Emo Philips
#14. Numerous are the posthumous museums and memorials devoted exclusively to one artist, architect or author and designed to preserve or artificially reconstruct the namesake's original working or living conditions.
Hans Ulrich Obrist
#15. No matter how consummate a work of art may seem, it is only an approximation of the original conception. It is the artist's consciousness of this discrepancy between his conception and the realization that assures his progress.
Edgard Varese
#16. An anomaly has his own ambitions. You can try reasoning with him, but that's like using money to bribe a beast.
Criss Jami
#17. All my pictures are a kind of revision of my original idea. This is surely very different from the way in which Japanese or Chinese artists work: their themes are pre-ordained, whereas mine are invented at will.
Antoni Tapies
#18. Why must ancients, and provided the same talent, be better than modern authors?
Free to exploit the vast realm of the simpleand the natural, they did not have to be artificial in order to be original (which every artist aspires to be).
Franz Grillparzer
#19. The only original part in a work of art is the infusion of the artist's own character, if he has one.
Austin O'Malley
#20. The essential thing is to spring forth, to express the bolt of lightning one senses upon contact with a thing. The function of the artist is not to translate an observation but to express the shock of the object on his nature; the shock, with the original reaction.
Henri Matisse
#21. I think all artists are looking for a subject or are sometimes unsure of their subject, but immigrant artists bring another culture to that and they bring also the place where the original culture meets the new culture.
Edwidge Danticat
#22. For me it is the direct contact of artist to material which is original, and it is the earth and his contact to it which will free him of the artificiality of the present and his dependence on industrial products.
Isamu Noguchi
#23. Artist Matthew Barney has made a film about "shit". It is hardly original. Hollywood has made shit films for decades.
Dean Cavanagh
#24. If evil means to be self-motivated, to be the center of one's own universe, to live on one's own terms, then every artist, every thinker, every original mind, is evil.
Janet Fitch
#25. Give royal treatment to your original magic effects, because one of the effects might make you the king of magic.
Amit Kalantri
#26. When a mad man found some certain way to express his insanity in original way, he would get promoted to be called an Artist ... Wait, are you talking about me?
Hiroko Sakai
#27. Billions of photos are shot every year, and about the toughest thing a photographer can do is invent an original, deeply personal, instantly recognizable visual style. In the early nineties, Wolfgang Tillmans did just that, transforming himself into a new kind of artist-photographer of modern life.
Jerry Saltz
#28. I have been in the music industry ever since I was six years old. I have been inspired by so many great artists and of course trying to be original at the same time. I try not to work under boundaries while I'm making music.
Asher Monroe
#29. Whatever is about you that is translated into your art, that's gonna keep you completly original and fresh and I just think that, that's just the best advice I can give, to an artist creatively.
Bubba Sparxxx
#30. Designers + artists see potential in things where others do not. I think artists in many ways are the original entrepreneurs.
Brian Chesky
#31. My original idea- and I still want to do it -for Pinko Records, would be to create a platform for other artists to do the same thing I did. They could create their own levels of donation and final goal. I have no idea how I would make any money on that -but I don't think like that.
Jill Sobule
#32. REPLICA, n. A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made the original. It is so called to distinguish it from a "copy," which is made by another artist. When the two are mae with equal skill the replica is the more valuable, for it is suppose
Ambrose Bierce
#33. Most people think an artist tries to be original, but originality is the last thing that develops in the artist.
Lukas Foss
#34. I print giclees for artists and photographers for a livelihood. My original idea was to somehow combine the two.
Donald Lambert
#35. The value of an artist is more because of his originality than his skill.
Amit Kalantri
#36. Art is original. Marcel Duchamp was an artist when he pioneered Dadaism and installed a urinal in a museum.
The second person to install a urinal wasn't an artist, he was a plumber.
Seth Godin
#37. No artist, if he has original talent, can paint like another.
Joseph Plaskett
#38. If an artist wants to be original, he should not look to art for inspiration, for art seeks its model in life, not art - and only life is rich enough to simulate originality.
Anthony Marais
#39. Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.
John O'Donohue
#40. Painters must want to paint above all else. If the artist in front of the canvas begins to wonder how much he will sell it for, or what the critics will think of it, he won't be able to pursue original avenues. Creative achievements depend on single-minded immersion.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#41. Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.
Theodor Reik
#42. If you have one person you're influenced by, everyone will say you're the next whoever. But if you rip off a hundred people, everyone will say you're so original.
Austin Kleon
#43. Duke Ellington always had a style: original, clean with interesting color combinations. He had an artist's eye.
Wynton Marsalis
#44. Women can also be creative in total isolation. I know excellent women artists who do original work without any response to speak of. Maybe they are used to lack of feedback. Maybe they are tougher.
Elaine De Kooning
#45. What the artist tries to do (either consciously or unconsciously) is to not only capture the essence of something but also to amplify it in order to more powerfully activate the same neural mechanisms that would be activated by the original object.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran
#46. An artist must forget painting when he paints. That's the only way he will do original work.
Pablo Picasso
#47. My idea of covers is that you should never cover a song and do it exactly like the artist because everyone's always going to compare it to the way the original artists did it, and they're just going to go, 'Oh I like the original better.'
Glenn Danzig
#48. The original series of Watchmen is the complete story that Alan Moore and I wanted to tell. However, I appreciate DC's reasons for this initiative and the wish of the artists and writers involved to pay tribute to our work. May these new additions have the success they desire.
Dave Gibbons
#49. If you're an original thinker, you are going get told 'no' a lot, and you have to be able to hear 'no' many times from the bankers and trust that at some point, someone is going to recognize that you are an artist and not a can of soda.
Nick Offerman
#50. Napster is great so long as they put out tracks on there that have been officially released. I don't really mind people downloading my music; I also see it as a compliment. And if you are a real music lover, you want to have the original CD anyway 'cause then you feel more connected to the artist.
Tiesto
#51. Jimmy [Dean] was the most talented and original actor I ever saw work. He was also a guerrilla artist who attacked all restrictions on his sensibility. Once he pulled a switchblade and threatened to murder his director. I imitated his style in art and in life. It got me in a lot of trouble.
Dennis Hopper
#52. Play is the taproot from which original art springs. It is the raw stuff that the artist channels with all his learning and technique.
Stephen Nachmanovitch
#53. The artist has to look at life as he did when he was a child. If he loses that faculty, he cannot express himself in an original, that is, a personal way.
Henri Matisse
#54. Like so many other nerdy, disaffected young people of that time, I dreamed of becoming an 'artist', i.e., somebody whose adult job was original and creative instead of tedious and dronelike.
David Foster Wallace
#55. I do original songs in the style of other artists, where I try to learn all their musical idiosyncrasies and try to do something that sounds like them and yet is a bit more sick and twisted.
Al Yankovic
#56. Restoration is a skilled profession. You might even call it an art in its own right, except that it is frowned on to be original. First rule of restoration: follow the intention of the artist. Never try to improve on him.
J.M. Coetzee
