Quotes About Artist

The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see.

Any writer, I suppose, feels that the world into which he was born is nothing less than a conspiracy against the cultivation of his talent--which attitude certainly has a great deal to support it. On the other hand, it is only because the world looks on his talent with such frightening indifference that the artist is compelled to make his talent important.

Societies never know it, but the war of an artist with his society is a lover's war, and he does, at his best, what lovers do, which is to reveal the beloved to himself and, with that revelation, to make freedom real.

The states of birth, suffering, love, and death, are extreme states: extreme, universal, and inescapable. We all know this, but we would rather not know it. The artist is present to correct the delusions to which we are all prey in our attempts to avoid this knowledge. - James Baldwin, The Creative Process

Ultimately, the artist and the revolutionary function as they function, and pay whatever dues they must pay behind it because they are both possessed by a vision, and they do not so much follow this vision as find themselves driven by it. Otherwise, they could never endure, much less embrace, the lives they are compelled to lead.

This is the only real concern of the artist, to recreate out of the disorder of life that order which is art.

But the conquest of the physical world is not man's only duty. He is also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of himself. The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.

The social aspect of being an artist has always made me uncomfortable.

I am uncompromising to the point of huge dissension in the studio. And it's served me very well. My theory and my philosophy is, 'Compromise breeds mediocrity.' Obviously, you have to pick your battles, and the more success an artist has, the more they want to be involved in their own career, which is not necessarily a good thing.

Part of being an artist is that you are achingly self-conscious about every aesthetic decision you make, and taste is at its most powerful when it's a default, unconscious decision because that's when all the influence of your childhood and background and society comes into play.

I'm an underground mix-tape artist who's had a level of commercial success.

For years, I survived as an artist on grants and touring as a dancer with dance companies, and I was living underground like so many artists, hand-to-mouth and so forth. And I never had the power to make decisions.

The artist one day falls through a hole in the brambles, and from that moment he is following the dark rapids of an underground river which may sometimes flow so near to the surface that the laughing picnic parties are heard above.

It would be awesome to stay popular, but if I was only an underground artist, I would be okay with that.

I was an underground artist, but the underground status was successful. Coming from where I came from to see where rap is now, now artists are selling from a million to eight million copies.

I didn't expect my popularity to be a mainstream thing, 'cause I'd only ever been an underground artist.

No matter how happy or hopeful I am, I always tend to drift back to that. It's underneath all the music I've ever written... An artist is trying to tell you how he's feeling. And if that accidentally becomes entertaining, it becomes a career.

The bottom line is fans just want to hear a good song. Some people will look underneath to see who wrote it, but they just want to hear a good song. And if they don't hear it, they're not going to buy it just because you wrote it.

If you're a battle rapper on the block, the emcee battle challenger, not writing your rhymes could really hurt you. When you're an artist where maybe the focus is really the talent and the different things you bring to the game, I believe it's more understandable.

The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding.

I need someone who understands an artist's mentality. I couldn't be with someone who wouldn't let me have my freedom.

I am an artist, and I have a lot more to offer than just being a one-dimensional character, and I think our audience sees that and understands that - they're behind it.

Sia's talent lies in her ability to really understand what pop is. And I think because she used to write for a lot of people, she understands different styles.

I understood the craft of photography when done by an artist is art.