Simple Artist Quotes

#1. A main part of the struggle of art has been to make an art that is direct, simple, humane, unconnected with powers that be in their essence ... To the degree that it is connected with the bourgeoisie via the marketplace and so on is not necessarily an artist's problem.

Robert Motherwell

#2. It's wonderful to make a lot of money, to be able to take care of my family, to have the facilities I have and really support the people the studio's involved with. But at the end of the day I'm quite simple as an artist-it's really about the power of art.

Jeff Koons

#3. I like life, it's wonderous and chaotic and somewhere in the middle I've created a safe place to do my thing in the world ~ I can't ask for much more & I am already so thankful when everything I got

Nikki Rowe

#4. An artist's responsibility is simple: to say through his art what can't be said any other way.

Marty Rubin

#5. And yet the point of view from which his ideas on art had sprung was a simple one: for him, literary schools did not exist; the only thing that mattered was the temperament of the artist; the only thing of interest was the way his brain worked, regardless of the subject he was treating.

Joris-Karl Huysmans

#6. I am living a simple life with a complicated mind and I have yet to find a state of mind where I feel safe with who I am, where I am, with what I do.

Charlotte Eriksson

#7. I do not see any essential difference between abstract and primitive art. Both are simple and sincere. Naturally, we should not generalize in these matters: It is the individual artist that counts.

Vladimir Nabokov

#8. What I definitely learnt from Michael Jackson is that simple is almost always better. As a songwriter, as an artist period.

Ne-Yo

#9. The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.

Henri Frederic Amiel

#10. When I did 'Tapestry' with Carole King, the record was spare and simple, like a demo. If someone had told me to go back and put horns on it, it would've been all wrong. If you're enthusiastic enough to sign an artist, let them do what got you enthusiastic.

Lou Adler

#11. Love is not only a feeling, it is also an art. A simple word, a sensitive precaution, a mere nothing reveal to a woman the sublime artist who can touch her heart without withering it.

Honore De Balzac

#12. Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

Walker Evans

#13. The artist has the liberty to exaggerate, to create in his novel a world more beautiful, more simple, more consoling than ours.

Irving Stone

#14. Success for an artist is completed work. Very successful artists complete a lot of work. It's that simple.

Paul Russo

#15. An artist has to be humble, an editor must be officious, and a publisher must be somewhere out in the galaxy enjoying godhood. It was a caste system, pure and simple. And it was accepted that way. Nobody thought of contracts, nobody thought of insisting on better deals.

Jack Kirby

#16. Every musician in the known universe has signed a bad piece of paper, myself included. But it's really very simple. You're the artist. It's your picture that's going on the CD cover, nobody else's. Protect yourself. Get a good lawyer. You'll kick yourself later if you don't.

Bun E. Carlos

#17. Stop trying to find the formula that will instantly make your idea into a winner. Instead of being scientists, the best marketers are artists. They realize that whatever is being sold is being purchased, because it creates an emotional want, not because it fills a simple need.

Seth Godin

#18. Whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war.

Rebecca West

#19. She was wild and free with a dab of logic in between, chasing her dreams and following her heart beat.

Nikki Rowe

#20. It's been so long now and so much has happened that I am able now to look back with much less emotion and my take on Andy as an artist now comes down to a simple sentence: he made religious art for a secular society which is why it has so much appeal.

Bob Colacello

#21. An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way.

Charles Bukowski

#22. The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple - to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

Craig Raine

#23. I like to work in the real world, so I do a lot of searching or just simple looking. But I'm not above tweaking reality and making something up. I don't think there are any rules in art. It's not so much what you see as it is the significance you, the artist, see in it.

Keith Carter

#24. I am a very simple man. I am a man first, an artist second. My first obligation is to the welfare of my fellow man. I will endeavour to meet this obligation through music, since it transcends language, politics and national boundaries.

Pablo Casals

#25. The simple truth is that being a creative artist takes courage; it's not a job for the faint of heart. It takes courage each and every time you put a book or poem or painting before the public, because it is, in fact, enormously revealing.

Terri Windling

#26. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of idea the artist is free to even surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition.

Sol LeWitt

#27. In general when you fall in love with an artist and their music, the plan is a fairly simple one.. get people to go and see them, and make a record that you think properly presents their music to the public and some of which you can get on the radio.

Peter Asher

#28. In effect, painting is the still memory of [the artist's] human motion, and our individual responses to it depend on who we are, on our character, which underlines the simple truth that no person leaves himself behind in order to look at a painting.

Siri Hustvedt

#29. A musician's or artist's responsibility is a simple one, and that is, through your music to tell the truth,

Tom Morello

#30. One of the central flaws in the state of contemporary music is that the major record companies have failed to incorporate that simple fact into their business plans. They've come into an industry that's based on idiosyncratic artists and tried to erase every idiosyncratic aspect out of it.

Moby

#31. The motif must always be set down in a simple way, easily grasped and understood by the beholder. By the elimination of superfluous detail, the spectator should be led along the road that the artist indicates to him, and from the first be made to notice what the artist has felt.

Alfred Sisley

#32. The old-fashioned idea that the simple piling up of experiences, one on top of another, can make you an artist, is, of course, so much rubbish. If acting were just a matter of experience, then any busy harlot could make Garbo's Camille pale.

Helen Hayes

#33. I feel like 'Next To Me' is a great introduction because it's a simple song that has a simple message for me. I wanted to introduce something that lyrically I'm proud of and introduces me both as an artist and as a writer.

Emeli Sande

#34. When I finally embraced abstinence it was because of the simple urge to work a longer day. Thus, without joining Alcoholics Anonymous, I was at last able to leave Piss-Artists Notorious.

Clive James

#35. From my point of view, any outstanding work of art is a fantasy insofar as it reflects the unique world of a unique individual. Art is not just simple arithmetic, it's a delicate calculus. Keep in mind the passion of the scientist and the precision of the artist.

Vladimir Nabokov

#36. All works of art are commissioned in the sense that no artist can create one by a simple act of will but must wait until what he believes to be a good idea for a work comes to him.

W. H. Auden

#37. An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way

Charles Bukowski

#38. There is no simple formula for the relationship of art to justice ... In the end, I don't think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope. My concern for my country is inextricable from my concerns as an artist.

Adrienne Rich

#39. Angelo is a brilliant jazz talent. His receptivity, seriousness, his ability to execute ideas simple or complex, combined with his love and feel for the substance of jazz reveal why he is an exceptional artist.

Mulgrew Miller