I'm an artist who works with pictures and words. Sometimes that stuff ends up in different kinds of sites and contexts which determine what it means and looks like. — Barbara Kruger
The artist is the person who makes life more interesting or beautiful, more understandable or mysterious, or probably, in the best sense, more wonderful. — George Bellows
I am an artist at living - my work of art is my life. — D.T. Suzuki
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world. — George Santayana
The young artist of today need no longer say 'I am a painter,' or 'a poet,' or 'a dancer.' He is simply an 'artist.' All of life will be open to him. — Allan Kaprow
Artmaking is making the invisible, visible. — Marcel Duchamp
I am also an artist. I have the whole world as my canvas. I paint souls. — Meher Baba
The scientist needs an artistically creative imagination. — Max Planck
I am an artist. I am here to live out loud. — Emile Zola
A true artist is someone who gives birth to a new reality. — Plato
To be an artist is to believe in life. — Henry Moore
An artist has been defined as a neurotic who continually cures himeself with his art — Lee Simonson
The artist's job is to be a witness to his time in history. — Robert Rauschenberg
Short Visual Artist Quotes
An artist is a man who says a difficult thing in a simple way — Sayings
I don't believe in art. I believe in artists. — Marcel Duchamp
The artist is not a different kind of person, but every person is a different kind of artist. — Eric Gill
Fine art is knowledge made visible. — Gustave Courbet
To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist. — Timothy Leary
The painter has the Universe in his mind and hands. — Leonardo da Vinci
Visual Artist Image Quotes
No artist tolerates reality.
What To Say To An Artist Quotes
One of the things my career as an artist might say to young artists is: The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph the best. And unless you photograph what you love, you are not going to make good art. — Sally Mann
If I create with my heart almost all my intentions remain. If it is with the head - almost nothing. An artist must not fear to be himself, to express only himself. If he is absolutely and entirely sincere, what he says and does will be acceptable to others. — Marc Chagall
As an adult (after college) and as an artist I thought about what was real, what sustained me - it was Christian Science. I was using that when I didn't know it. Saying yes to the Light and your better instinct. — Alfre Woodard
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
All I can do is say I smell a rat. I don't know where it is or what kind of rat it is, but as an artist, I can express how. But I couldn't responsibly stand up and tell people which way to go, because then I'm just as guilty as the people who are telling everybody else what to do and where to go. — Maynard James Keenan
As an artist you actually do have to make a choice to be an outsider. If you're an outsider you have the freedom to say what people on the inside don't dare to say. — Connie Nielsen
What I say to an artist is, 'When you can't paint - paint. — Joyce Cary
There is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
My definition of art is whatever an artist calls art. Us speaking could be an artwork, us sitting in the near-dark in your kitchen beside the dirty dishes and smoking, me thinking of what to say next. — Matthew Brannon
I think that's the hardest part for an artist is finding their voice and learning how to write, finding what they have to say that is unique. — Morgan James
I am an artist and have no right buggering about with verbs and split infinitives, which is what being a writer says to me. — Ralph Steadman
What do you say when someone has truly inspired you? How do you express to an artist how deeply their work has affected you? — Laura Dern
Visual Art Quotes
The life of a designer is a life of fight. Fight against the ugliness. Just like a doctor fights against disease. For us, the visual disease is what we have around, and what we try to do is cure it somehow with design. — Massimo Vignelli
Art works because it appeals to certain faculties of the mind. Music depends on details of the auditory system, painting and sculpture on the visual system. Poetry and literature depend on language. — Steven Pinker
A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who ispires others.
I mean, making art is about objectifying your experience of the world, transforming the flow of moments into something visual, or textual, or musical, whatever. Art creates a kind of commentary. — Barbara Kruger
The world of visual perspective is one of unified and homogeneous space. Such a world is alien to the resonating diversity of spoken words. So language was the last art to accept the visual logic of Gutenberg technology, and the first to rebound in the electric age. — Marshall McLuhan
Our one goal is to give the world a taste of peace, friendship and understanding. Through the visual arts, the art of celebration of life. — Steven Spielberg
Every artist was first an amateur.
In learning the art of storytelling by animation, I have discovered that language has an anatomy. — Walt Disney
I like photography because it is a reality medium, unlike drawing which is unreal. I like to mess with reality...to bend reality. Some of my works beg the question of is it real or not? — Storm Thorgerson
The style of ancient Egyptian art is transcendently clear, something 8-year-olds can recognize in an instant. Its consistency and codification is one of the most epic visual journeys in all art, one that lasts 30 dynasties spread over 3,000 years. — Jerry Saltz
Architecture is a visual art, and the buildings speak for themselves. — Julia Morgan
Graphic Artist Quotes
He who works with his hands and his head and his heart is an artist — Francis of Assisi
There is no design without discipline. There is no discipline without intelligence. — Massimo Vignelli
Graphic design will save the world right after rock and roll does. — David Carson
Create your own visual style... Let it be unique for yourself and yet identifiable for others.
Perfect typography is certainly the most elusive of all arts. Sculpture in stone alone comes near it in obstinacy. — Jan Tschichold
The artist constructs a new symbol with his brush. This symbol is not a recognizable form of anything which is already finished, already made, already existing in the world - it is a symbol of a new world, which is being built upon and which exists by way of people. — El Lissitzky
The most popular typefaces are the easiest to read; their popularity has made them disappear from conscious cognition. It becomes impossible to tell if they are easy to read because they are commonly used, or if they are commonly used because they are easy to read. — Zuzana Licko
I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.
You can't do better design with a computer, but you can speed up your work enormously. — Wim Crouwel
Design can be art. Design can be aesthetics. Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated. — Paul Rand
The life of a designer is a life of fight: fight against the ugliness. — Massimo Vignelli
A designer is a planner with an aesthetic sense. — Bruno Munari
Woman Artist Quotes
The moment a woman comes home to herself, the moment she knows that she has become a person of influence, an artist of her life, a sculptor of her universe, a person with rights and responsibilities who is respected and recognized, the resurrection of the world begins. — Joan D. Chittister
The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I'm one of the best painters. — Georgia O'Keeffe
She was a sweet girl but not really pretty, a rough sketch of a woman with a little of everything in her, one of those silhouettes which artists draw in three strokes on the tablecloth in a café after dinner, between a glass of brandy and a cigarette. Nature sometimes turns out creatures like that. — Guy de Maupassant
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist
I believe that all women are pretty without makeup- but with the right makeup can be pretty powerful. — Bobbi Brown
I am not an angel and do not pretend to be. That is not one of my roles. But I am not the devil either. I am a woman and a serious artist, and I would like so to be judged. — Maria Callas
It was not very easy for a woman to impose herself as a modern artist in Germany… Most of our male colleagues continued for a long time to look upon us as charming and gifted amateurs, denying us implicitly any real professional status. — Hannah Hoch
Learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist.
I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens. — Georg Baselitz
If painting is no longer needed, it seems a pity that some of us are born into the world with such a passion for line and color. — Mary Cassatt
The only thing I know is that I know nothing — Socrates
I don't paint like a woman is supposed to paint. Thank God, art doesn't bother about things like that. — Alice Neel
Performing Artist Quotes
Bullfighting is the only art in which the artist is in danger of death and in which the degree of brilliance in the performance is left to the fighter's honor. — Ernest Hemingway
The Southern Baptist Church is a specific culture in itself. So, I had to study, talk to people, watch tape and go to performances to see how Gospel artists move compared to secular artists. — Boris Kodjoe
My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes. — Steve Prefontaine
No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did he would cease to be an artist.
The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act. — Marcel Duchamp
If you practice for ten years, you may begin to please yourself, after 20 years you may become a performer and please the audience, after 30 years you may please even your guru, but you must practice for many more years before you finally become a true artist-then you may please even God. — Ali Akbar Khan
It was special with me being from Memphis and knowing the history of the venue, knowing all of the artists who performed in the Orpheum before me. Even having the idea to approach it was ambitious on my part, but I thought they would turn me down at first. — Yo Gotti
Every child is an artist. The challenge is to remain an artist after you grow up.
The artist must forget the audience,
forget the critics, forget the technique, forget everything but love for the music.
Then, the music speaks through the performance,
and the performer and the listener will walk together
with the soul of the composer, and with
God. — Mstislav Rostropovich
I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within. — Louise Berliawsky Nevelson
For me, making the show work was getting belly laughs - like most variety artists. But the straight actor believes you fix your performance in rehearsal and that's it. — Ron Moody
The real self of an artiste lies in art, so when an artiste performs, all the pain, trauma and tension get released through art, be it dancing, painting, singing, writing or even martial arts. — Mrinalini Sarabhai
Being An Artist Quotes
An artist must be free to choose what he does, certainly, but he must also never be afraid to do what he might choose. — Langston Hughes
To be an artist, one must . . . never shirk from the truth as he understands it, never withdraw from life — Diego Rivera
Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist. — Pablo Picasso
As an artist I have always tried to be faithful to my vision of life, and I have frequently been in conflict with those who wanted me to paint not what I saw but what they wished me to see. — Diego Rivera
Make your life your art. It doesn't have to be that you're an artist. I know I talk about art a lot, but I mean a very broad thing with that. You could be a veterinarian, that's your art. Find your art; find your thing you love. — Gerard Way
There's no diploma in the world that declares you as an artist—it's not like becoming a doctor. You can declare yourself an artist and then figure out how to be an artist. — Kara Walker
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity. — Alberto Giacometti
Art alone makes life possible - this is how radically I should like to formulate it. I would say that without art man is inconceivable in physiological terms...
Even the act of peeling a potato can be an artistic act if it is consciously done. — Joseph Beuys
The true work of art is born from the 'artist': a mysterious, enigmatic, and mystical creation. It detaches itself from him, it acquires an autonomous life, becomes a personality, an independent subject, animated with a spiritual breath, the living subject of a real existence of being. — Wassily Kandinsky
Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it, and there's no admission fee. — Banksy
Contemporary Art Quotes
If Graffiti is art and art is a crime then how come piccaso never done time? — Melvin Glover
My work seen in its totality is a statement about the integration of the contemporary artist into an industrial society. — Herbert Bayer
The task of cinema or any other art form is not to translate hidden messages of the unconscious soul into art but to experiment with the effects contemporary technical devices have on nerves, minds, or souls. — Maya Deren
Graffiti writers will never stop. They'll just evolve. It's interesting what ideas people come up with and how it all extends forward. — Ben Eine
For me it's very important to turn Kiev into one of the main centers of contemporary art in the world. There is New York. There's London. And there will be Kiev. Everyone will come and say, 'Wow! — Victor Pinchuk
A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with. — Banksy
I especially like to collect contemporary art. — Yusaku Maezawa
I began collecting artwork as a way to help young artists to promote their work as well as to increase awareness of contemporary art among the younger generation. — Yusaku Maezawa
I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity. — Cindy Sherman
New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas. — Sol LeWitt
Graphic Art Quotes
Creating is about sharing ideas, sharing aesthetics, sharing what you believe in with other people. — Shepard Fairey
The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive. — Vladimir Lenin
The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects. — Wassily Kandinsky
You can have an art experience in front of a Rembrandt... or in front of a piece of graphic design. — Stefan Sagmeister
The wonders of the Grand Canyon cannot be adequately represented in symbols of speech, nor by speech itself. The resources of the graphic art are taxed beyond their powers in attempting to portray its features. Language and illustration combined must fail. — John Wesley Powell
Designers can create normalcy out of chaos; they can clearly communicate ideas through the organising and manipulating of words and pictures. — Jeffrey Veen
Simplicity, carried to an an extreme, becomes elegance. — Jon Franklin
Art is the only place you can do what you like. That's freedom. — Paula Rego
Design is the application of intent - the opposite of happenstance, and an antidote to accident. — Robert L. Peters
An artist is not paid for his labor but for his vision. — James Whistler
Fine Artists Quotes
I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart. — Vincent Van Gogh
I would rather die of passion than of boredom. — Emile Zola
Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels. — Francisco Goya
Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art. — Andy Warhol
Whether you are sixteen or over sixty, remember, understatement is the rule of a fine makeup artist. — Helena Rubinstein
Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing. — Marc Chagall
Hatred, rancor, and the spirit of vengeance are useless baggage to the artist. His road is difficult enough for him to cleanse his soul of everything which could make it more so. — Henri Matisse
Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God. — Rembrandt
I'm not a jazz artist. Don't get me wrong now, it's all music to me. I just played music and if it's likeable, someone liked the sound, then fine, but I'm not interested in being a jazz musician. I don't consider myself a jazz musician. I don't have anything to do with that word. — Pharoah Sanders
The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. — William Faulkner
Conceptual Art Quotes
After a few months in my parents' basement, I took an apartment near the state university, where I discovered both crystal methamphetamine and conceptual art. Either one of these things are dangerous, but in combination they have the potential to destroy entire civilizations. — David Sedaris
John Baldessari, the 79-year-old conceptualist, has spent more than four decades making laconic, ironic conceptual art-about-art, both good and bad. — Jerry Saltz
I'm not saying Sonic Youth was a conceptual-art project for me, but in a way it was an extension of Warhol. Instead of making criticism about popular culture, as a lot of artists do, I worked within it to do something. — Kim Gordon
Anything can be art. Art is the relations between relations, not the relations between objects. — Joseph Kosuth
Realism and Naturalism rely mostly on the eye of the flesh. Abstract, conceptual and surrealistic art rely mostly on the eye of the mind. Great works of art rely on the eye of contemplation, the eye of the spirit. — Alex Grey
Conceptual art, for me, means work in which the idea is paramount and the material form is secondary, lightweight, ephemeral, cheap, unpretentious and/or ‘dematerialized’ — Lucy R. Lippard
I've come to understand that life is best lived, not conceptualized. — Bruce Lee
The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. — Sol LeWitt
I have come to understand that life is best to be lived and not to be conceptualized. I am happy because I am growing daily and I am honestly not knowing where the limit lies. — Bruce Lee
In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work — Sol LeWitt
No other creative field is as closed to those who are not white and male as is the visual arts. After I decided to be an artist, the first thing that I had to believe was that I, a black woman, could penetrate the art scene, and that, further, I could do so without sacrificing one iota of my blackness or my femaleness or my humanity. — Faith Ringgold
Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics. — Fritjof Capra
Doing graphic novels is cool! It's fun! You get to write something, and then see it visually page by page, panel by panel, working with the artist, you get to see it fleshed out. — Anthony Bourdain
Good design is a lot like clear thinking made visual. — Edward Tufte
I think that a visual artist's philosophy develops much more freely than a writer's or a thinker's philosophy. It is not so disciplined. The photographer works with both his eyes and his mind. — Manuel Alvarez Bravo
What to paint was a problem for the war artist... the old heroics, the death and glory stuff, were gone forever... the impressionistic technique I had developed was now ineffective, for visual impressions were not enough. — A. Y. Jackson
Mark Ryden is my favorite visual artist. — Melanie Martinez
Abstract means literally to draw from or separate. In this sense every artist is abstract for he must create his own work from his visual impressions. A realistic or non-objective approach makes no difference. The result is what counts. — Richard Diebenkorn
A lot of musicians are good cooks, and a lot of cooks are musicians, but I think that may just be a result of the creative impulse finding several means of expression. Probably an equivalent number are visual artists, woodworkers or compulsive liars. — Steve Albini
We used the camera only as a means of expression and as a visual medium that offers possibilities found in no other artistic technique, possibilities that the eye cannot catch in their totality. We tried to establish a characteristic vision of photography. — Piet Zwart
Color, like everything else concerning visual expression, usually boils down to a gift, an innate sensibility and sensitivity. Ultimately, artists develop their own palette and color sense. — Scott Kahn
Symphony is the ability to see the big picture, connect the dots, combine disparate things into something new. Visual artists in particular are good at seeing how the pieces come together. I experienced this myself by trying to learn to draw. — Daniel H. Pink
There are many aspects about what and why we photograph: visual pleasure, personal empathy, intellectual stimulation, technical excellence, etc. Serious photographers and artists will try to create works that are original. Over a career period they may develop a singular identity in their images. — Michael Kenna
I have sketched since a young age, so there's always been an artistic side, a visual side to my personality. — Mark Parker
Unlike a lot of choreographers, I don't always start with the music. I often start with a visual artist, and then find music that fits the world of that visual artist. — Wayne McGregor
Certain Academy Awards like Sound and Visual Effects and Editing are sometimes referred to as technical awards. They're not technical awards. They're given for artistic decisions. And sometimes we make them better than others, and I guess we made a couple of good ones on this one. — Randy Thom
In the visual arts, for example, the semiological approach to graphics provides a rigorous analysis of the visual means used by the artist. It defines the basic properties and laws governing the arts and suggests objective criteria for art criticism. — Jacques Bertin
I've always thought of the book as a visual art form, and it should represent a single artistic idea, which it does if you write your own material. — Chris Van Allsburg
I feel like at the end of the day, as entertaining as movies are, when you're part of them in a way, it's this beautiful art form and that's what it feels like for me. I'm not a painter, but I can express myself visually in a way that allows me to artistically create. — Shailene Woodley
Unfortunately, young Russian artists are in a difficult position today. Painting, like all other arts, rests on a continuity of experience. More than anything, young painters and sculptors need to know the works of their immediate elders. Such a continuity does not exist here to a sufficient degree in the visual arts. — Ilya Ehrenburg
At the age of 80, I'm becoming a visual artist. This could be my rebirth. — Harry Seidler
I feel the theatre is the most unique one of all [the arts] for collaboration. I feel very fortunate to be in a field where I really do get to have long conversations with the visual artists, the actors, the musicians. It's all art forms rolled into one and I feel very fortunate to be a part of it. — Susan Stroman
But in the old days, visual artists used to fall into two distinct categories: those of us who created images with cameras and those of us who applied stuff onto other stuff, with brushes or other tools. — Buffy Sainte-Marie
I am a horrible visual artist. I can't fix a car, sew, knit, cook, etc. Statistically, there is more I don't do than do. — Carrie Brownstein
I began as a boy with artistic talent... as a visual artist... I thought that was what I'd become and in my late teens drifted into reading serious literature. — Russell Banks
Writers and musicians know well the importance of extensive reading for successful writing or extensive listening for musical composition. Likewise, visual artists... understand that successful artistic creativity depends upon extensive visual exposure. — Paul Laseau
I suggest that it is the honesty of the attempt to recreate the forms and spaces visually without artistic editing that is one of the hallmarks of realist painting. — Philip Pearlstein
For me art is a continuous discovery into reality, an exploration of visual data which has been going on for centuries, each artist contributing to the next generation's advancement. I wanted to go a step further and extend the boundaries. — Audrey Flack
Visual artists choreograph dances for the eyes, guiding visual journeys in specific ways. But when presented with little or nothing, the journeys of the eyes become erratic and finally still their restless searching. The eye and mind and heart grow quiet, come to rest, and begin to understand their own functioning more deeply. — John Paul Caponigro
An artist gives. Gives visually, gives through courses, or with free advice, through generosity of spirit and through a need to share. — Veronica Roth
It is difficult to say why I decided I wanted to be an artist. Obviously, I had some facility, more than other people, but sometimes facility comes because one is more interested in looking at things, examining them, more interested in the visual world than other people are. — David Hockney
Each typeface is a piece of history, like a chip in a mosaic that depicts the development of human communication. Each typeface is also a visual record of the person who created it - his skill as a designer, his philosophy as an artist, his feeling for... the details of each letter and the resulting impressions of an alphabet or a text line. — Will Burtin
The artist does not illustrate science; ... [but] he frequently responds to the same interests that a scientist does, and expresses by a visual synthesis what the scientist converts into analytical formulae or experimental demonstrations. — Lewis Mumford
As both a fine artist and a graphic designer, I specialize in the visual presentation of words. — John Langdon
Our visual and musical artists have no incentive to be educated. So what we get is a bunch of uneducated artists inspiring misinformation, miseducation and illiteracy. — Rhymefest
To me, as a visual artist, I don't want to get into the theory of Buddhism. There are many Buddhism theories and they fight each other, like Christians as well. — Hiroshi Sugimoto
My bottom line is that I think Ridley Scott is one of the greatest visual artists of our time and I feel very privileged that he wants to work with me, so I go with that flow. — Russell Crowe
I'm really inspired by the interplay of visual art and music, a total artistic environment where there's sound and visuals. When I think about that I get stimulated and excited. It's a feeling that you can't label with words. — Black Francis
Artists who have produced experimental innovations have been motivated by aesthetic criteria: they have aimed at presenting visual perceptions. Their goals are imprecise, so their procedure is tentative and incremental. — David Galenson
I was an artistic dilettante for a while, in photography and collage and the visual arts. — Thomas F. Wilson
I was a visual artist primarily and a writer, even from a very young age. I wrote a lot of stories and poetry and... I had a desire to create always. And I always had a desire to show my work. — P. J. Harvey
I was always a visual person. I could see things visually. I had a harder time with numbers and logic, and I always had more of an artistic sensibility. So that I could do. And it was something that I really loved. — Bruce Davison
Beyonce is such a visual artist. This was just trying to figure out another side to her that could be fun and young and exciteful and a great video. — Bryce Wilson
In Conclusion
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