Top 100 Quotes About Great Artists
#1. I find in all the artists that I admire most a disturbing element, a distortion, giving evidence of a struggle ... In great art, this conflict is hidden, it is unresolved. All that is bursting with energy is disturbing - not perfect.
Henry Moore
#2. When most artists walk offstage, they go to a lonely hotel room. I went home to my family. They were there before the show, during and after. It's been great. I never would have done it any other way. I wasn't gonna miss raising my kids. There was no way that was gonna happen.
Gloria Estefan
#3. There is a great promise for our cultural growth, but this promise is achieved only when our artists recognize that all great art has nationality, an imprimatur achieved with the keenest remembrance of time and place.
F. Sionil Jose
#4. I don't feel that electronic music has to stand on the back of urban artists or anyone else to be recognized. It's great music.
Kaskade
#5. I get a lot from great '90s artists like Juliana Hatfield, The Pixies, and bands like That Dog and The Breeders.
Margaret Cho
#6. It's not curators, it's not critics, it's not the public, it's not collectors who find great artists - it's other artists.
David Galenson
#7. Pitbull is great with brands. Endorsements with hip-hop artists work because hip-hop artists typically set the most trends ... It's every brand's goal to be seen in the mainstream, and hip-hop music has become mainstream music.
Adam Kluger
#8. Artists must be men of wit, consciously or unconsciously philosophers; read, study and think a great deal of life ...
Robert Henri
#9. I have come to realize, after over thirty years of studying human creativity, that the great divide is not between those who are artists and those who are not, but between those who understand that they are creative and those who have become convinced that they are not.
Erwin Raphael McManus
#10. I think it's important for artists to work together. It's great for fans to see, like, Ludacris came out to our show in Atlanta and kinda made a surprise appearance there, it shows a mutual respect for what each other does.
Jason Aldean
#11. I've never been able to understand where great artists come from.
Harold Prince
#12. Recently, the Germans have developed a tendency to prefer the so-called first (youthful) style of great artists to their mature works. Could it be that they do not realize that their aesthetic criteria, generally speaking, are juvenile?
Franz Grillparzer
#13. Performa's founder and prime mover, Roselee Goldberg, has great instincts for which artists might collaborate well together.
Roberta Smith
#14. Talking with other artists is an incredible process. You engage with the work very differently ... a nd different relationships between different works start to emerge. To tap into that energy-to tap into that moment-is great for me as an exercise.
Shahzia Sikander
#16. When you go on your Twitter or look down your Timeline and it's all great positivity - I love that. But at the same time, it can really divert you from what your purpose is or what you're trying to do. And I've seen artists get caught up in that.
Kendrick Lamar
#17. Great art is always a way of concentrating, reinventing what is called fact, what we know of our existence- a reconcentration ... tearing away the veils, the attitudes people acquire of their time and earlier time. Really good artists tear down those veils
Francis Bacon
#18. My personality is very good for nurturing. I'm very empathetic to my artists. You speak to anyone who's worked with me and they'll say, "Oh yeah, Steve's great. He doesn't have the ego."
Steve Lillywhite
#19. What is great about art and artists is that we get to ask the questions, even though we may never know the answers.
Dennis Quaid
#20. There are so many great artists and most of them are women, but that's good - the more the merrier!
Rachel Stevens
#21. There are so many great artists that are doing interesting things, that I don't want to focus on boring people.
Kathleen Hanna
#22. There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.
Erica Jong
#23. Cookery is a wholly unselfish art: as 'art for art's sake' it is unthinkable. A man may sing in his bath every morning without the least encouragement, but no cook can cook just for his or her own sake in a like manner. All good cooks, like all great artists, must have an audience worth cooking for.
Andre Simon
#24. It's like every time you have one of these, you're sort of - your lease is renewed another five years. And that's kind of great for me 'cause that's all I really want to be doing still at this point, like just making records and getting to work with, like, artists that I think are exciting.
Mark Ronson
#25. There are so many great artists, I think, who kind of suffer from being icons, legends, acknowledged masters.
Richard Linklater
#26. Artists are a very important part of our society because they make a great contribution to our values. The artist creates a value system that we all grow up on, whether we know it or not.
Roy DeCarava
#27. Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sport figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high.
Viktor E. Frankl
#28. He wasn't, but producers are by definition annoying because they have a different agenda from you. They're trying to stop you spending money and you're trying to not spend money, but at the same time we're great artists.
Michael Apted
#29. A great many contemporary artists from hugely diverse backgrounds are currently approaching the prospect of cultural mixing ...
Lucy R. Lippard
#30. Great sculptors and artists spend countless hours perfecting their talents. They don't pick up a chisel or a brush and palette, expecting immediate perfection. They understand that they will make many errors as they learn, but they start with the basics, the key fundamentals first.
Joseph B. Wirthlin
#31. I see artists as a great battalion moving through paint, words, music towards cosmological interpretation.
Lawrence Durrell
#32. Artists were always referred to as great artists. I thought that's what the profession was. One word: great-artist. There wasn't one moment in my life when I thought I wanted to be anything else.
Hedda Sterne
#33. Still, the film nearly didn't happen a number of times. There were great arguments with United Artists about how to reduce the cost because they were nothing if not conscious of the price of the film.
John Schlesinger
#34. The Renaissance is studded by the names of the artists and architects, with their creations recorded as great historical events.
Arthur Erickson
#35. The great artists of the world are never Puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable.
H.L. Mencken
#36. There's so much great stuff out there. The artists who've been most formative to me are the ones I've had the privilege to work with over the years.
Nick Blaemire
#37. Every man who is any kind of artist has a great deal of female in him. I act and give of myself as a man, but I register and receive with the soul of a woman. The only really good artists are feminine. I can't admit the existence of an artist whose dominant personality is masculine.
Orson Welles
#38. The greatest artists have never been men of taste. By never sophisticating their instincts they have never lost the awareness of the great simplicities, which they relish both from appetite and from the challenge these offer to skill in competition with popular art.
Jacques Barzun
#39. I believe artists deserve all the help they can get, so they can focus on being great artists.
Janina Gavankar
#40. Artists are exposed to great temptations: their eyes see paradise before their souls have reached it, and that is a great danger.
Phyllis Bottome
#41. The great artists ... do not want security, egoistic or materialistic.
Brenda Ueland
#42. You know, it's no accident that the great painters came from areas like Europe where there is a lot of clouds and rain, which begets color and subtle washes of tone. Most great graphic artists come from areas with prevalent sun, where line and shadow are paramount.
Al Hirschfeld
#43. Individuality and originality is was separates good and great artists! How much they can move people with what they do! If they can shake the heart with what they do, is the key!
Hiromi
#44. Doing theater anywhere, especially in L.A., is a constant uphill battle, and there's also the unsexy parts of the business that you're faced with, like getting money. It's a really great thing to do. You feel like you're really an artist when you're doing that and you're in a company of artists.
Finn Wittrock
#45. True poets, like great artists, have scarcely any childhood, and no old age.
Sophie Swetchine
#46. Music is art, art is life, and we are who we are, and all of these aforementioned women, unless they should choose not to, will be performing well into the next many decades because they are great artists.
Lara St. John
#47. A great magician is as divine as God and his stage is as majestic as the paradise.
Amit Kalantri
#48. Artists get to step outside their comfort zone a 'lil bit and we get some great songs!!
Matt Squire
#49. I love music that has good catchy choruses and fits into many different genres ... I like real artists, that write their own material and are great performers.
Perez Hilton
#50. When your hair is rising, that's when you know it's a good song - that's happened to me with some artists and some songs, John Lennon songs or when Nina Simone sings. It's great to make those moments yourself.
Jose Gonzalez
#51. It's a great advantage to be able to play people off against each other, isn't it? You go to Christie's and get a quote on something. And then you go to Phillips' and you tell them what Christie's has given you. I like auctions for artists.
Damien Hirst
#52. The works of the great artists are silent books of eternal truths.
Stefan Zweig
#53. There was a great sense of community mainly among the women artists at the time because we felt left out. I still know most of the women that I knew then, the ones that are still alive.
Michelle Stuart
#54. Why is an artist an artist? Artists simply do feel and see things in a different way to other people. In a way it's a blessing, but it can also be a terrible curse. There's a great deal of satisfaction to be earned from it but often it's also a terrible burden.
Roger Waters
#55. The degree of talent, the size of the gift, is immaterial. All artists must listen, but not all hear great symphonies, see wide canvasses, conceive complex, character-filled novels. No
matter, the creative act is the same, and it is an act of faith.
Madeleine L'Engle
#56. The problem doesn't lie with the great teachers. Great teachers strive to create linchpins. The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead. Here
Seth Godin
#57. A great thing happening now in art is that artists are using the figure, the body, clothing, life.
Issey Miyake
#58. Most great artists define a new and unique region of hell.
Scott Miller
#59. I think that most great artists who are extremely known, as I am, would intimidate a lot of people. I don't want to do that to people, but I know I do.
Ray Charles
#60. Now I can't abide rudeness, even in so called great artists. Rudeness and cruelty are the qualities i hate most. Rudeness and cruelty are always connected, I feel. One example out of many is Stalin.
Dmitri Shostakovich
#61. In general, you have great artists who have died far too early and who have left great cultural impact. If you look at people like Vincent van Gogh or Jean-Michel Basquiat-there's a long, long list of artists who have died in tragic circumstances, and far, far too early.
Simon De Pury
#62. I don't think successful musicians were really put on this planet in order to have a great time, pat themselves on the back and say, 'Oh, what a clever boy I am!' I think that, like most artists, we were put on the planet to suffer just a little. And we do.
Ian Anderson
#63. The perfect party for me is having six to 12 people for dinner Friday or Saturday - good, fun friends, a lot of artists. I have a beautiful deck that looks over the canyon and Los Angeles on one side, so it's very pretty at night. It's a great opportunity to catch up with friends.
Sofia Milos
#64. I'm a big fan of certain new acts. I love any genre of music, and I think it's really great to see that there are new artists coming through. It's kinda funny to think that I'm like the old man on campus now. But I'm really happy for groups like One Direction. I think they're really good guys.
Joe Jonas
#65. A lot of writers and artists are like chefs who eat their own cooking in the kitchen and then deliver an empty plate with assurances that it's great.
Peter Schjeldahl
#66. Originality is way overrated. To make, you need to take. All great artists do.
Walter Darby Bannard
#67. Wynton and Christopher were really great experiences for me because they are both very gifted artists.
Kathleen Battle
#68. General belief is "There is no real magic, only tricks" but a great magician compel people not to trust that belief and make them believe, after all "There does exist a real magic".
Amit Kalantri
#69. All great scientists have, in a certain sense, been great artists; the man with no imagination may collect facts, but he cannot make great discoveries.
Karl Pearson
#70. In the tradition of great female artists, Karla Bonoff, Bonnie Raitt, Christine McVie, Shawn
Colvin, Sarah McLachlan ... now enter Maia Sharp.
Art Garfunkel
#71. In New Orleans, bounce music was prevalent. That was all they wanted to hear. It was new and trendy, and it was hot, and it was taking off. Artists were coming out of everywhere. They did some great songs, some really catchy, fun songs. That was just the feel of New Orleans music.
Mystikal
#72. It evoked Picasso and Miles Davis for me - two great artists who totally indulged themselves in their work and who they were, but they certainly didn't give a damn what other people thought.
Rodney Crowell
#73. Back then: to be regarded as well-known, one had to be great. Today: to be regarded as great, one has to be well-known.
Mokokoma Mokhonoana
#74. It seems we would rather have a past filled with great scientists than just great artists and writers who could dream up these wonderful and awe-inspiring creations. It's a strange irony: we're spending our time trying to find the truth in our past, but creating myths of ourselves in the present.
Aditya Iyengar
#75. It's really amazing that I was discovered and that I've been given these great opportunities to travel the world and work with amazing artists. I'm very blessed.
Misty Copeland
#76. A grocer is attracted to his business by a magnetic force as great as the repulsion which renders it odious to artists.
Honore De Balzac
#77. I think people who are artists, actors, singers, great songwriters, they tend to have a hyper state of emotion where they feel things very, very deeply, probably more deeply than the average person walking down the street where it may affect them, but not to the same extent.
Willie Aames
#78. I have noted that, barring accidents, artists whose powers wear best and last longest are those who have trained themselves to work under adversity. Great artists treasure their time with a bitter and snarling miserliness.
Catherine Drinker Bowen
#79. Mumford and Sons and Adele are both incredible artists and are great for popular music. There's a lot of club music with heavy beats, so to have that Mumford record and hear banjos being used is so cool.
Dave Haywood
#80. For artists it's a lot easier to make art in bad times than it is in good times. When you've got no money it's easy to just drink your way through it and make great art. But if you're making lots of money it can be very problematic.
Damien Hirst
#82. I think the thing about what I want to achieve for the label is it to really be a home for artists who are already developed, who already have a great sense of their artistry or their imaging, who don't really feel or want that marketing push.
Solange Knowles
#83. Some artists will tell you that's all they want to do is write their own music, and that's great, but George Strait, Kenny Chesney, Tim McGraw, Garth Brooks, they didn't write everything they recorded, and they've had major, major careers. I think it's all about the best song.
Jake Owen
#84. Great innovators and original thinkers and artists attract the wrath of mediocrities as lightning rods draw the flashes.
Theodor Reik
#85. [Great artists] do not copy what they see, but what they desire.
Theophile Gautier
#86. There are two great classes of men: the people and the scholars, the men of science. For the former, nothing exists but that which directly leads to action. It is for the latter to see beyond. They are the free artists who create the future and its history, the conscious architects of the world.
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
#87. As for famous men who were not artists, I am beginning to be tired of them. Those poor little scoundrels who are called great men fill me with nothing but overwhelming horror.
Franz Liszt
#88. There were some extremely good teachers there that were great artists really in their own right. It was actually very hard to concentrate on getting down to going any work being an art student especially when it's a flighty thing at best.
Graham Coxon
#89. Alan is a great guy, a terrific guy. We haven't worked together since then, and he's always working with different artists. I think he sees different dimensions he can see from different guys.
David Lloyd
#90. A lot of people aren't familiar with me, but it's not my job to make people familiar with me. There's millions of artists out there. I'm just gonna do what I wanna do, and if people feel the stuff that I'm doing, then great.
Riff Raff
#91. The work of great poetry is to aid us to become free artists ourselves ... The art of reading poetry is an authentic training in the augmentation of consciousness, perhaps the most authentic of healthy modes.
Harold Bloom
#92. People want to be successful, and they want to be acknowledged for what they do. Sometimes they make really great art and aren't. Historically, the best artists weren't. But their work survived.
Devendra Banhart
#93. I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that's all they do, that's fine by me. If they're good at churning out tortured artists, that's great!
Paul Rust
#94. I think that most artists scorned would prefer to be known as the one with the genius brain risking no career over the one with the good brain and great career.
Criss Jami
#95. We all tell our own stories the way we live our lives. My story is: Life is too short to not believe in fresh voices. I don't have Hollywood stars. I have great American artists.
Kevin McCollum
#96. I think great artists have no time to waste with having disproportionate egos and irrational requests. They're too focused on their work to actually lose themselves in hysterical spirals where they become monsters or tyrants.
Xavier Dolan
#97. I think the great artists, especially in literature, have always thought with the heart.
Douglas Sirk
#98. I cannot be convinced that great artists are moralists. Art is first appearances, then meaning.
Camille Paglia
#99. If you subtracted all of the great artists who never drank, who never went to excess, you wouldn't have any more art left. What kind of poem are you gonna get out of a glass of iced tea?
David Lee Roth
#100. Something great about 'The Last Ship' is that it employs a lot of actors, and a lot of actors are getting work because of it, and all these people are in here, and all these artists are working together.
John Pyper-Ferguson
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