Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,161,747 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
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“In such a picture the artist may depart from actual fact, from what actually was, so long as he does not exceed what might have been.”
Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) said by 1908 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“… what the photographer has to be urged, persuaded and argued with, to do, are often matters which the artist never needs to think about, because it would be unnatural to him not to act in unconscious obedience thereto.”
Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) said by 1908 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the 1950's there was a kind of agreement that a good artist would do something in his picture that acknowledge the edge, but it was a question of doing something when you got to the edge. Cropping was something new. It came from photography and from Clement Greenberg. It was resisted as being too easy.”
Kenneth Noland (1924–2010) said by 2010 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The artist created; the owner possessed.”
Eli Siegel (1902–1978) said by 1978 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is there any more mysterious idea for an artist than the conception of how nature is mirrored in the eyes of an animal? How does a horse see the world, or an eagle, or a doe, or a dog?”
Franz Marc (1880–1916) said by 1916 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The creative artist has an essential role in modern society. By expressing his individual ideas and emotions he adds to the sum of human awareness.”
Lloyd Goodrich (1897–1987) first seen 1966 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'The Artist in American Society' - Colorado Magazine Vol. 15 No 2 Autumn 1966
“By definition, a catalogue raissonne employs methodical scholarship to gather and digest in systematic form all that can be known of an artist's work and life. In short the evidence of his intellectual and cultural life.”
Gail Levin (born 1948) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction -'Edward Hopper-an intimate biography' University of California Press, Berkeley, 1995
“I always say I'm an escape artist, Style is something I've always tried to avoid. I'm more interested in character. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on it.”
Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) first seen 1989 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Sketches for a Series, interview with art-critic Rose Slivka; as quoted in 'Elaine de Kooning, Artist and Teacher, Dies at 68', New York Times, Grace Glueck, February 2, 1989
“Nowadays, when an artist discovers 'the sky,' it's like a bride who has never done any housework raving about her first vacuum cleaner. It's just not news." (Yet she confessed that the experience prompted her to deviate from a more controlled linear style and work freely with lively, confrontational colors directly influenced by the Southwest)”
Elaine de Kooning (1918–1989) first seen 1960 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as quoted on Portrait of the Art world - A Century of art News, Photographs], referring to the photo of w:Rudolph Burckhardt's Gelatin silver print, 1960 (printed 2002), Published December 1960; Estate of Rudolph Burckh…
“To arrive at such a discovery, fruit of a log and precious education, involves a whole field of precise technique. The artist must immerse himself in his own anxiety, dredging up everything that is alien, imposed or personal in the derogatory sense, in order to arrive at the authentic zone of values.”
Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You [Dutch Zero-artist, Henk Peeters] take the North of Europe, I'll take the South. Switzerland will be our neutral zone where we shall have our common exhibition. (Manzoni's reaction when Henk Peeters accused him of plagiary]”
Piero Manzoni (1933–1963) said by 1963 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever the apparent aim of the artist, he is called upon first to move the spectator, after having been himself struck by a design or color composition which may or may not have a relation to natural objects. His predilections, his preferences, crystallize afterwards in the choice of means to interpret those natural objects; these means are always, obligingly, of imaginary essence.”
Ossip Zadkine (1888–1967) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: New York, early 1944; as cited in: Artists on Art – from the 14th – 20th centuries, ed. Robert Goldwater and Marco Treves; Pantheon Books, 1972, London, p. 429
“..my favorite artist, when I first began to paint, was actually Cézanne. Later, between 1920 – 1930, I developed a great interest in Chardin [famous for his still-life], w:Vermeer and Corot, too.. ..that's why you have been able to detect in my works of between 1912 – 1916 some recognizable influences of the early Paris cubists and above all, of Cézanne.”
Giorgio Morandi (1890–1964) said by 1964 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Those who do Negro-sculpture in this country are wrong. We are in France; in the country of Ronsard, La Fontaine, and Racine. What connection is there between this country and these men, and Negro sculpture? An artist can only create in accordance with the character of his people and his time.”
Aristide Maillol (1861–1944) said by 1944 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We accepted her as an artist. And with her popularity, everybody, from school kids to grown ups, have watched her sites. People are paying money to watch her. How can there be tolerance for all this? What will the new generation learn?”
Pahlaj Nihalani (1950–2026) first seen 2015 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On pornstar-turned-actress Sunny Leone, as quoted in "I don't mind being called conservative: Pahlaj Nihalani" The Hindu (26 January 2015)
“There is a democratic but deluded post-modern fantasy whereby everybody is demed an artist.”
Dennis O'Driscoll (1954–2012) said by 2012 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Considering that Beuys was born in a small German town called Kleve and I was born in another small German town called Bad Oldesloe, I believe that even an airport can be an inspiring place for an artist. A Nobel Prize laureate once said something along the lines of, 'The more one travels, the more intelligent one becomes,' however, I think that you can still travel a lot and remain sheltered.”
Isa Genzken (born 1948) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Artist should be left alone to paint or not to paint, write or not to write.”
A. R. Ammons (1926–2001) said by 2001 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poincaré was an artist par excellence. Estheticism with him was not a mere creed: it was a way of life.”
Tobias Dantzig (1884–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When we fight we're going to fight fight, for real fight. He thinks he's the ninja, I'm the ninja— Ninja Gaiden, American ninja, real motherfucking ninja. This ninja martial artist right here—I started that shit.”
Nate Diaz (born 1985) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "UFC 196: Nate Diaz Vows to Bring Ninja 'Sh*t' Against Conor McGregor" (24 February 2016)
“I believe that as a martial artist even if you can't win a fight, you should be able to not be able to die or lose.”
Nate Diaz (born 1985) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in "Nate Diaz discusses win over Conor McGregor" (5 March 2016), UFC on FOX, FOX
“The artist, and more especially he who uses a camera, must enedeavor to be, not a mere recorder of external facts, but one who forms a vivid mental impression and tries to make us realize his impression.”
Arthur Hammond (1880–1962) said by 1962 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The artist and the poet have the facility for mistaking pure languor for meditative peace and strength. True meditation "rests" in swiftness.”
Vilhelm Ekelund (1880–1949) said by 1949 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I Am the Artist when I am Open. When I am closed I am Brion Gysin.”
Brion Gysin (1916–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You go through different arcs in your career. I think when I was younger, I was very into the performing side of the industry. I came to acting through that way, and then having gone to university and studied cinema studies and watching tons of films and understanding film theory and making a conscious choice of working with auteur director marks a new chapter in my development as an artist.”
Sarah Gadon (born 1987) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: SARAH GADON IS NEW CLASS' 'MOST LIKELY TO WEAR A CORSET (September 30, 2011)
“I think when you work with really wonderful directors who have a really strong vision, it lets you as an artist set the tone for your own career. So for me, it's not necessarily having that kind of notoriety. I'm interested in great work and working with people that have a singular vision, and I think the work dictates that.”
Sarah Gadon (born 1987) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: SARAH GADON IS NEW CLASS' 'MOST LIKELY TO WEAR A CORSET (September 30, 2011)
“There's the all mighty powerful ones like Mr. Khan — which is a con artist himself, and he uses the death of his son, who's an American soldier, which we respect and honor, and he uses that to go after Trump, which I found very distasteful.”
Paul LePage (born 1948) first seen 2016 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In an interview with Boston radio host . (August 25, 2016)
“Does not the beauty of the artist's work lie for us in the accuracy with which his symbols resume innumerable facts of our past emotional experience? ... [A]esthetic judgment... how exactly parallel it is to the scientific judgment.”
Karl Pearson (1857–1936) first seen 1815 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introductory. Pearson refers the reader to William Wordsworth's preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1815) "General View of Poetry".
“I don't know if I would say I'm an artist. [...] I would say that I'm a craftsman. I attempt to ply my trade in the best possible way. If occasionally something transcends the craft, then that's wonderful. [...] It doesn't happen very often.”
Roger Corman (1926–2024) first seen 2011 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: From an interview, as cited in "Roger Corman: 'My subconscious must be an inferno'", The Guardian (May 19, 2011)
“The individual artist plays the role of a kind of "damaged" vessel into which subjectivity flees in its attempt to escape the reifying effects of bourgeois practice. Artists embody the last outpost of subjectivity, they are neurotic Messiahs, as it were, who represent for all humankind the final hope for salvation from the wholly administered and rationalized world.”
Richard T. Gray (born 1952) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“State censorship was an obvious assault on our creativity, but few Chinese writers actually acknowledge the serious and endemic issue of self-censorship. For me it was as clear as the operation of the state's apparatus – without self-censorship an artist in China would get nowhere and had no voice.”
Xiaolu Guo (born 1973) first seen 2017 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Once Upon A Time in the East: A Story of Growing up, Chatto & Windus, 2017, page 259 (ISBN 9781784740689).
“To be an artist, you look, you perceive, you recognize what is going through your mind. And it is not ideas. Everything you feel and everything you see and everything that your whole life goes through your mind, you know. But you have to recognize it and go with it and really feel it.”
Agnes Martin (1912–2004) first seen 1974 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1974
“Beauty is very much broader than just to the eye. It is our whole, positive response to life. An artist is fortunate in that his work is the inner contemplation of beauty, of perfection in life. We cannot make anything perfectly, but with inner contemplation of perfection, we can suggest it.”
Agnes Martin (1912–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Although we are all different, we all respond to each other's suggestions of perfection. And we enjoy the same response as the artist. It is the inner contemplation, the wanting to respond to life, that opens our eyes to what is already in the mind.”
Agnes Martin (1912–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everything is contemplated in the mind without meditation. We make a very complicated response. Just to look at a floating branch evokes very complicated objective and nonobjective responses. The artist must slow all this down, mentally. It is this mental experience that makes the representation of beauty possible.”
Agnes Martin (1912–2004) said by 2004 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“What do I care? 'I don't come here [studying with the Paris' artist & teacher Paul Delaroche to please anybody. I come because there are antiques and models to teach me, that is all. Do I object to your figures, made of butter and honey [to Alfred Boisseau?”
Jean-François Millet (1814–1875) first seen 1839 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Millet, c. 1839; as cited by biographer , in Jean-Francois Millet – Peasant and Painter, transl. Helena de Kay; publ. Macmillan and Co., London, 1881, p. 54
“The artist's mission is to give shape to what is eternal in nature, to reveal its inherent beauty; he sublimates the shapes of the human body. He shows an enlarged and simplified nature, liberated from all the details, which do not tell us anything. He shows us a work according to the size of his own experience, of his heart and his spirit.”
Ferdinand Hodler (1853–1918) first seen 1897 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote from a speech of Ferdinand Hodler: 'The artist's mission' (held in Freibourg in 1897), first published in 1923 in Zurich; as cited by Paul Westheim in Confessions of Artists - Letters, Memoirs and Observations of …
“It's an updated version of what's being talked about or danced to today but still with my classic grit to it. Good part about it is the 1990s are back so this was da best time to do it. A lot of artist samplin' Three 6 now, our music was before its time.”
“Without a doubt, Banksy is the most influential street artist in the world today. It took him many years vandalizing the streets of London with his iconic stencils to receive a worldwide recognition. I am not sure, but I don’t think there is any city or any police department in the world that wants to have a vandal that is so famous as Banksy.”
Clandestine Culture (born 1970) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I define myself as an UFA, an Unidentified Free Artist.”
Invader (artist) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[the task of material culture is] to shed light on the tasks of production in our country, and also to discover the place of the artist-constructor in production, in relation to improving the quality both of the manufactured product and of the organization of the new way of life in general.”
Vladimir Tatlin (1885–1953) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, May 1924; from Tatlin's lecture on 'Material Culture and Its Role in the Production of Life in the USSR'; as quoted by Larissa A. Zhadova, ed., Tatlin, trans. Paul Filotas et al; Thames and Hudson, London, 1988, …
“It was pretty clear to me and to them. I mean, most of my family are artists; my grandma, she’s a painter and she sleeps during the day and paints all night; she has all these health problems but she’s a devoted and committed artist. I was on the phone with her this morning and she said the best thing which was, ‘I’m in my second childhood, I should enjoy it.’ She’s in her 90s.”
Zoey Deutch (born 1994) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Apollo is the greatest adventure of all humankind, and it needs to be recorded in every way possible for future generations in books, in movies and on television. … I’m an artist. That’s the way I care about things. Maybe 200 years from now, someone will say, "I’m glad he did that.”
Alan Bean (1932–2018) said by 2018 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everyone is an artist. Everyone is creative in their own way and that that creativity is a great thing. It's a human thing and it needs to be nurtured and it can help us go down life's path and help us to become deeper, richer, more satisfied human beings.”
Rainn Wilson (born 1966) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“As an artist you can not stand for long in The Netherlands. You must see a lot and talk a lot about everything.. (translation from German, Fons Heijnsbroek, 2018)”
Jacoba van Heemskerck (1876–1923) first seen 1915 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: note on a postcard to Herwarth Walden, 17 May 1915; as cited by Arend H. Huussen Jr. in Jacoba van Heemskerck, kunstenares van het Expressionisme, Haags Gemeentemuseum The Hague, 1982, p. 12
“The free artist must also have the spunk to tear himself away from his first ideas, for experience teaches us that these [ideas] are not always pure, but often false.”
Barend Cornelis Koekkoek (1803–1862) said by 1862 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Besides (and I now quote the artist's own words) I never put a bullet in my gun, but only pretended, to do so!”
Matthijs Maris (1839–1917) first seen 1907 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote of Matthijs Maris, as cited by David Croal Thomson (1907), in: The Brothers Maris (James – Matthew – William), ed. Charles Holme; text: D.C. Thomson; publishers, Offices of 'The Studio', London - Paris, 1907, p. B…
“It's silly to call me the new Ed Sheeran. He can fill stadiums as a solo artist, but I'm not like that.”
“That light that begins to die is so sad to watch. I think at 15, you can still live the dream a little bit, right? [Graduate and] be broke and go live in New York or wherever and try and be an artist — if you're in it for the right reasons.”
David Harbour (born 1975) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Erie Reader (September 12, 2018)
“I'm a bit of a punk in my essence and in my core. I'm a bit of an artist and a trickster and, you know, I believe in sort of tearing up the status quo for what people expect you to do.”
David Harbour (born 1975) first seen 2018 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Erie Reader (September 12, 2018)