Now the expectation is that, once the public decides that the artist is gentrified, the public demands that the artist stop growing. And [the public] actually puts all their energy into reasserting or re-establishing what the artist has long ago left behind. Because that's what they want. The source of creativity, the gift that's been given, be damned.
The arrogance of the artist is a very profound thing, and it fortifies you.
We should self-examine and talk about things like our own white privilege and these phony senses of being an artist.
Just because I'm a recording artist doesn't mean I'm not an artist. Because I had to grow.
There's no particular evidence that any of the lower mammals or any of the other animals have any interest in aesthetics at all. But Homo sapiens does, always has and always will.
Being a good artist is the toughest job you could pick, and you have to be a little nuts to take it on.
I figure as an artist the best thing you can do is follow your heart - and if your heart is marketable, then you win.
It's on the strength of observation and reflection that one finds a way. So we must dig and delve unceasingly.
The architect must be a prophet. . . a prophet in the true sense of the term. . . if he can't see at least ten years ahead don't call him an architect.
The books I made, most of those books were made in the '80s or early '90s. I was reacting emotionally at that time; it wasn't an intellectual thing. I didn't make those things for public presentation; those were for my friends. So I wasn't doing this to be an advocate for what I'm talking about right about now. But I'm realizing I was working properly as an artist, or whatever you want to call it, as somebody that naturally was inquisitive.
We're creators by permission, by grace as it were. No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world.
If, in making a portrait, you hope to grasp the interior silence of a willing victim, it's very difficult, but you must somehow position the camera between his shirt and his skin. Whereas with pencil drawing, it is up to the artist to have an interior silence.
To be an artist or a writer is to be this weird thing - a hand worker in an era of mass production.
Becoming an artist is about sitting and paying attention to the world that is passing everyone else by
The superior artist is the one who knows how to be influenced.
I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.
Artists are interested in pictures as sources of ideas for their work. Where the pictures come from and how they are made is of little concern to them.
The great scientist dares to differ from accepted 'facts' - think irrationally - let the artist do likewise.
The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.
It's a big responsibility to help someone express themselves as an artist.