Being an artist Quotes

Quoted here the artists about art. Did you know that the term Aesthetic was “hacked” by the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten in 1735 to define Art as an autonomous entity out of morality, politics and religion? Aesthetic philosophy is still today taught in Fine art schools and helps the artists to avoid the reality of the art world they will be thrown in afterwards.

All the quotes are published on our Instagram account

Being an artist – Artistic mindset

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

Seeking mentors

“Make sure you seek out and nurture mentors. Successful artists work closely with other artists and have not one but often numerous mentors to guide them through their careers.”
– Angie Wojak

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

The pretension of being an artist

“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)

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

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 questioning art

Integrating criticism

“People, especially on the Internet, are so open about their feelings. You will never say that to somebody’s face, but the whole criticism is integrated into my mind because I read the comments. This is true for everyone on the Internet, everyone is gonna get trolled or bullied or whatever “

Negativity and positivity

“I am gonna choose to take a positive direction on it. And then still even after that, I get bombarded by those polarizing comments. And then, it’s a kind of poison to listen to negativity but it’s also a little bit of poison to listen to positivity as well. Because they can get into your head, and that’s a kind of a pitfall of an artist as well.”

Fake art

“So now I am kind of thinking the direction is “Fake Art”. And that’s kind of weird to say my art is fake art puts that idea out there, for me obviously, I don’t think it’s fake art but a lot of people do, and so, to address that and to put that as a leading statement I think it’s kind of interesting because it’s almost like we gonna start to talk about this before you even have talked about it.”
–Callen Schaub

Artist failure

“I realized that as simple as this notion sounds, there’s actually a real challenge involved. Why? Because you have to risk failure and embarrassment to show who you are within the thing you’re making”
-Howard Sherman

Making by hand

“What does it mean to make by hand, to make with a single body, when the influence and the impact of distance in the proximity of our daily lives have changed everything?”
-Ann Hamilton

When we build

“We choose where to live, what to surround ourselves with, what to spend our time and energy on.
We make our world what it is and we become the kind of people who live in it.
When we’re gone all that’s left of us is what we’ve made.
The things you and I make may not leave a visible footprint on the earth but everything we make takes up space, creates noise, competes for attention.”

A dent in the Universe

“We all have an idea, we all have something that we want to make for no other reason than we want it to exist.
Something small, meaningful,
Now what we get to do when we leave here
We get to go make things
Things that nudge the world a little bit on what we hope is the right direction.
We get to put a dent in the Universe.
This is a great job.”

Wilson Miner, 2011 Build Conference in Belfast
Mentioning Robert Irwin

Lockdown and thinkers

It seems to be a reaction to this kind of over positive post you might have already shared or seen:
“During the plague, Newton spent full-time on the studies and experiments that would lead him to develop his theories on calculus, optics and gravity.”
– Emily Nussbaum ‘s tweet

Artists on Social Media

The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media for Artists

“Best people to get criticism from are the people who have a stake in your success and failure.
.
they are not going to flippantly lob criticisms because if they do that and it damages you it damages them. But if they see that there’s something you’re really doing wrong here, they will come to you with criticism because it’s a matter of extended protection, self-protection… yeah. So those are the people who have a stake if they have a stake in your success and failure.”
– Draftsmen S2E25 (at 72:54)
Stan Prokopenko and Marshall Vandruff

This is the way

“Being an artist on Social Media is just constantly trying to find new ways to say ‘thank you’”

✒ RJ Palmer concept artist