Artist Quotes

To find a form that accommodates the mess, that is the task of the artist now.

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.

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.

To the real artist in humanity, what are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of all.

The painter who draws merely by practice and by eye, without any reason, is like a mirror which copies every thing placed in front of it without being conscious of their existence.[Il pittore che ritrae per pratica e givditio d’ochio, sanza ragione è come lo spechio, che in se imita tutte le a se cotraposte cose sanza cognitione d’esse.]

The Man who never in his Mind and Thoughts travel’d to Heaven Is No Artist.

The greatest benefit we owe to the artist, whether painter, poet, or novelist, is the extension of our sympathies.

The difference between a bad Artist and a Good One Is: the Bad Artist Seems to copy a Great deal. The Good one Really does Copy a Great deal.

The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web. That is why we must not discriminate between things. Where things are concerned there are no class distinctions. We must pick out what is good for us where we can fing it – except from our own works. I have a horror of copying myself. But when I am shown a portfolio of old drawings for instance, I have no qualms about taking anyting I want from them.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.[L’artiste se forge dans cet aller retour perpétuel de lui aux autres, à mi-chemin de la beauté dont il ne peut se passer et de la communauté à laquelle il ne peut s’arracher. C’est pourquoi les vrais artistes ne méprisent rien ; ils s’obligent à comprendre au lieu de juger.]

The artist after all is a solitary being.