Being an artist Quotes

Artistic mindset

What it takes

“I think people don’t quite realize how much work it takes to be a good artist—the drive and determination and self-criticism. You have to be harder on your work than anybody. But you’re always going to find people like that in every generation.”
-Roberta Smith Co-Chief Art Critic New York Times
✒ “Roberta Smith with Jarrett Earnest” Brooklyn Rail

More than an artist

“I always get tongue-tied when people ask me what I do.
I feel I can’t just say artist, plus I like the idea or being MORE”
Alli-K

Those things that you say

“Integrity means living your life in accordance with the things that you say. So when you say things publicly, you should live according to those things that you say. So I think that’s something that helps me that I try to be very vocal about what I think is the right way to live, the right way to make art. And I hope I think it helps keep me honest and helps keep me on track.

The battle of art

Maybe means saying a few to everyone else for a little while and just creating that thing that you’re most passionate about. Whatever it is, fighting compromise and distraction is part of the battle of art and overcoming it is part of the satisfaction that comes from making art.”
Brandon Dayton

Artist common sense

“Our society is so lost. While I’m here painting and being inspired by how beautiful our planet is, it’s all just burning down. Yesterday I spent the day hiding feeling incapable of understanding:

• why are corporate agendas more important than the lung of our world,
• why do we protect profit instead of natural resources,
• why we see ourselves as individuals separate from other living organisms in our shared home when actually we are all of them.

In order to look for what is more convenient for ourselves we have to think of what is more convenient for all of us, and that is work under ethical and sustainable manners that don’t harm others, it’s just common sense.”
Caro Arévalo

The same

“In a way, I’ve been making the same painting ever since I was fourteen”
David Salle

The artist mindset

“That’s part of the artist mindset, that you’re always looking for things that don’t exist. It’s maddening. But when you get to a place you didn’t even expect to exist, it’s the most satisfying, fulfilling feeling that I’ve had next to having a child.”
–Elise R Peterson – The Creative Independent

Entrepreneurial artist

“The entrepreneurial artist does not fit into a system of legitimation already established. He seeks to create his own promotion matrix. In another term, it’s a hacker artist”
Frederic Clad

Pretention

“I’m the closest thing you’ll get to Picasso in this life”
Julian Schnabel
-Article The Guardian, Photo: Nathaniel Welch/Corbis Outline

Being a bad artist

“I’m a bad artist. I’m lazy and I’m untalented and bad. That’s not really true, but it’s how I feel a lot of the time. And when I’m looking back at my favorite projects over the last decade, I’ve noticed how often they were preceded or motivated by really negative emotions like this. I get something similar to creative block, but I would just call it paralysis. I’m just afraid to make anything at all. I’m afraid it will be shitty. And when other people ask me for advice on making stuff, I say stuff like…”

Just keep making things. Don’t worry about it. Just make it and think about it later.

Make stuff

“And that’s easier said than done because you want the stuff you make to be so good and better than all the stuff you’ve made before, and good enough to live up to your crazy expectations of what makes a thing good.”

Feel like shit process

“I’m an idiot. I’m an idiot because it’s an ongoing cycle. And I’m not saying this to complain. I just think a lot of people have this problem, and part of the solution for me is letting myself feel like shit. That’s part of my process. Most of my art projects are either inspired by anxiety and negative emotions, or they’re like a release valve from anxiety.”
–Lisa Hanawalt, BoJack Horseman – XOXO Festival (2015)

Success versus experience

“Maybe I could have been more successful earlier on if I’d focused on one medium, but I wouldn’t trade it for the myriad of experiences I’ve had along the way. I like to do it all, but it doesn’t come without sacrifice.”
Malia James
-Interview by Armine Iknadossian (2013)

The financial cushion

“Getting started as an artist is wildly unsustainable unless you already have a financial cushion, which might come from a trust fund or sex work or a rich spouse.”
Molly Crabapple (artnews)

The Godlike right

“I was really interested in artists’ belief in themselves. I think that when Duchamp gave artists the godlike right to designate something as art, he puts artists in a very difficult position. How do you command that authority? To do that is really a real shift and I don’t think it’s any accident that Duchamp started experimenting with his persona. He started crafting identities at the same time as crafting ideas.”
(…)
“Ironically, with conceptual art, being an artist becomes the craft.”
–Sarah Thornton “33 Artists in 3 Acts” Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago 2014

Artist assistants

“When I post images on Instagram showing staff members other than myself painting of assisting with the installations, from some corner of the world inevitably arrives the criticism.”
Takashi Murakami

Art monetization direct-to-consumer

“The Kaplan Twins are two really sexy girls that I found online I got this space and asked them if they wanted to move-in, they said yes. This is effectively an art incubator. Almost immediately we started to think of ideas of how we can monetize their brands in the environment which is direct-to-consumer part sales on Instagram. They made this interesting observation which was that they got a lot more likes on photos of themselves than they did on their artwork. So we got to think about how we can integrate an art object into their lives and tell the stories of their involvement with the art object. Then sell it directly to consumers.”
-Matty Mo ( aka The Most Famous Artist ) about The Kaplan Twins

Dating an artist

“Anyone who dares to date an artist or a writer shouldn’t be surprised if they end up in their art in some form.”
Angela Olsen

An artist mantra

“Henry James, he was on his deathbed, he is at the peak of his career, he has never made a misstep, everything he has done is perfectly… he begs, he begs for one more chance to do something good. And he has this wonderful… it’s my mantra:
“We work in the dark,
We do what we can,
Our doubt is our passion,
and our passion is our task.”
And it’s like this military march that I march to. I think of it all the time.”
-Sally Mann

Lifetime and art time

“I was an illegal immigrant in the States for fourteen years, and most of my One Year Performances were done during this time. We could use the Panama Canal as an example: when a ship comes from a lower to a higher water level or the other way around, the ship can pass through only when the two different water levels meet. The water level of my art and life need to be the same, so I can sail into art from life, and transfer lifetime to art time.”
Tehching Hsieh “Tehching Hsieh’s Thirteen Year Plan”

Egocentrism and collaboration

“For two egocentric driving artists, it is not easy to join forces. To create one and the same work together and authorize the work as one. And that was the difficulty actually”
-Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen)
30 November 1943 – 2 March 2020
“Ulay Interview: Under My Skin” Louisiana Channel

Heritage and difference

“(…) this is what I’m trying to do with my painting: work within the tradition I inherited, but make moves that signal my difference from it.”
-Njideka Akunyili Crosby
✒ Interview by Erica Ando on Bomb magazine Sep 15, 2016

Artists about art

Poetic definition

“Art is the loudest silence. Scream quietly”

Aya

Art background

“What I’m trying to do is kind of combining classical performance art, like from the 60’s or 70’s, with kind of viral videos of today. So I’m really into the performance art aspect of it. People that know performance art notice that kind of straightaway, they don’t have a problem with it. But people that do not have an art background have a lot of problem with me calling it art. But I mean, I really don’t care.”
✒ Interview on Mashable April 16, 2029

Worthwhile

“Before I started posting my videos on Instagram my audience was quite small to put it mildly, putting up art shows seen by less than a hundred people wasn’t unusual. Now my videos have been seen by millions. It’s quite bizarre. If anything, it has strengthened my belief that what I’m doing is worthwhile.”
-Jan Hakon Erichsen
Visual artist and balloon destroyer
✒ Interview The Yale Politic

what we stay alive for

“And medecine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love: these are what we stay alive for.”
– Tom Schulman, “Dead Poets Society”

The importance of Art

“Art is so important for humanity as it is both useless, worthless and priceless!”
Joseph Kaliher

An agent of concepts

“Art is thought made manifest. It is the transition of ideas into matter, conjuring a rabbit out of a top hat’s silky ether. An artist is an agent of concepts, both shamanic and constructive. Paint or clay may be the media. An artist is the medium. Art is magic”

Matt Smart

The galleries

“It was about the work and the whole concept of the show was home and family. But to me, home is somewhere that I feel comfortable, to just kick back and like relax and read and I don’t feel rushed. I feel like a lot of time in galleries when I go there I feel like I go in, I see the work, and I come ou. And I don’t relate to this space or I don’t relate to anything within the space.”
Ronan McKenzie Project “I’m Home” (2018)

Tribal artists

“Amazing art styles can be found in every corner of the earth but unfortunately, the earth is round. This is especially true for tribal artists where the art patterns are not even recognized as art as it could be as simple as lines or dots. It’s about time tribal art is given the same value or status as much as other art forms”

Sangma Hanny

The possibility it doesn’t work out

“The scariest thing is to know that you finally have gotten to this level, that I’ve always strived to attain since I was fourteen years old… Um… and there’s a possibility that you know, it doesn’t all work out. You know, that it isn’t all perfect once you get to this… the most… the uppermost echelon. And this one took four months. And I worked on it… I didn’t take a break. I worked on it straight through for four months. Every day, seven days a week.”
William Fisk

I’m not an easy person to live with. Because, you know, I’m married to my work, in a way. But your partner, your wife or spouse, is completely understanding that you need to do that or to be the person you want to be. And that’s an incredible gift.”

Quality of the work

“When you really care about what you are doing and it really matters on a personal level, it comes through the quality of the work. I think that’s what viewers respond to most.”
Zaria Forman

Knowing yourself

“Abstraction is one of the most sophisticated ways of coming to feeling, like a piece of music: You have tone, color, rhythm, so many things that touch you right inside,”
(…)
“I really want to get to the core of what I don’t know. And what I don’t know fascinates me more than what I know, even about myself.”
-Shirazeh Houshiary
✒ “As Tensions Rise With Iran, So Does Interest in Art It Inspired”
NY Times March 8, 2020
By Farah Nayeri