Artist quotes
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"A great artist can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo see that this lovely young girl is still alive"
"There's a lack of creativity in every field because people are afraid. As an artist in this world we can do whatever we want"
"I am in the lineage of Gil Scott-Heron, great activist-type artists. But I'm also in the lineage of a Miles Davis - you know, that liked nice things also."
"The only way I've been able to survive the betrayal of lovers, family members, and society is to be able to create as an artist."
"How I wished I'd have had a camera of my own, a mad mental camera that could register pictorial shots, of the photographic artist himself prowling about for his ultimate shot - an epic in itself. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958)"
"They are always asking a writer why he does not write like somebody else, or a painter why he does not paint like somebody else, quite oblivious of the fact that if either of them did anything of the kind he would cease to be an artist."
"every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. The sitter is merely the accident, the occasion. It is not he who is revealed by the painter; it is rather the painter who, on the coloured canvas, reveals himself."
"The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. ... One might point out how the Renaissance was great, because it sought to solve no social problem, and busied itself not about such things, but suffered the individual to develop freely, beautifully, and naturally, and so had great and individual artists, and great, individual men. One might point out how Louis XIV, by creating the modern state, destroyed the individualism of the artist."
"I'm developing artists for my new record label, my son's band, Intangible, being one of them."
"To many people Michael Jackson seems an elusive personality, but to those who work with him, he is not. This talented artist is a sensitive man, warm, funny, and full of insight. Michael's book 'Moonwalk', provides a startling glimpse of the artist at work and the artist in reflection."
"No artist is normal. Who happen to be normal cannot be an artist."
"Just as a picture is drawn by an artist, surroundings are created by the activities of the mind"
"I said to Mr. Pavarotti once ... a marvelous man and a great artist ... I said to him ... "Maestro, I'm having trouble closing out a note so that it's almost as thin as a butter knife ... finish it out quietly like that." I said, "I have trouble doing that. What do you think I should do?" He said, "Justa close up your mouth." That's all he said, and I fell on the floor. I thought he was gonna give me a dissertation."
"Since I cannot sing, I paint."
"The worst thing that can happen to an artist is to be subsidized by the state. It leads to an intellectual and artistic castration."
"Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses."
"Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason."
"Who sows virtue reaps honor."
"As I've grown as an artist, I've learned that my mission statement is really self-expression. I don't want anybody to classify my music. I want them to say, "This is somebody who's recognizing his true feelings, his true emotions, ideas, thoughts, opinions, and views on the world, all on one record." I want people to recognize that and to take it and apply it to their own lives. You know what I'm saying? The more and more I get out and talk to different people, I realize they appreciate that - me being unapologetic in whatever views and approach I have."
"I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous man, the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the man in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable"
