Real Artists Quotes

I like kids’ work more than work by real artists any day.

Art is a vocation, as much as anything in this world. For the real artist, it is the most natural thing in the world, not as necessary as air and water, perhaps, but as food and water. But we really do lead almost a monastic life, you know; to follow it you very often have to give up something.

The real artist, who knew what he was imitating, would be interested in realities and not in imitations; and would desire to leave as memorials of himself works many and fair; and, instead of being the author of encomiums, he would prefer to be the theme of them.

Nirvana’s amazing, but they’re just never going to find another one, there’s no artist development anymore, you’re never going to have a U2, you’re never going to have a Bruce Springsteen, those guys didn’t make it off of their first single and real artists probably won’t make it off of their first singles.

The real artist is striving to depict his subject’s character and to stress the caricature, but at least it is art which is alive.

It is important to express oneself…provided the feelings are real and are taken from you own experience.

Yet a real artist, I’ve noticed, will survive anything. (Even praise, I happily suspect.)

He who is discouraged after a failure is not a real artist.

That’s because only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear – the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness.

I think Damien Hirst is hilarious. And I think he’s a true artist. He’s not hilarious first; I think he is a real artist, and I also think he’s got an amazing sense of humor.

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

Real artists, it seems to me, are those who don’t repeat themselves.

A real artist may create his picture in a lonely desert… gods look over his shoulder; he creates in their company. What does he care whether or not anybody admires his picture?

The artist is a strange being. I think it’s safe to say that a real artist is conscious of having a personal singularity that is partly a blessing and partly a curse. An artist enjoys and suffers from isolation. As solitude, isolation can nurture. It can also destroy.

The real artist has no idea that he is sacrificing himself for art. He does “what he does for one reason and one reason only-he can’t help doing it”

In every human being there is the artist, and whatever his activity, he has an equal chance with any to express the result of his growth and his contact with life. I don’t believe any real artist cares whether what he does is ‘art’ or not. Who, after all, knows what art is?

Many of us believe that ‘real artists’ do not experience self-doubt. In truth, artists are people who have learned to live with doubt and do the work anyway.

You know, real artists, we expose our flaws. We long for intimacy.

Real artists take the misery and sadness of life and translate it into art.

As soon as I got into music, I tried to be a working, real artist who gets paid for what he does, who doesn’t have a day job.

Think it’s so unfair when people think that you’re not a “real artist” unless you’re getting paid for it….I personally know so many poets that work a 9 to 5 in a cubicle and come home and write poetry. Their poetry is just as powerful and moving as anything that I’ve ever written, if not more.

I was working with real artists [in the Rum Diary], and that’s difficult to do and very rare, in this industry, ironically.

I feel like I am a real artist and I want to be able to feel what I am singing about. So when I sing, ‘Leave (Get Out),’ I have been through that. I think it is just a new generation, whether people are ready for it or not. Teenagers are dating.

The real artist’s work is a surprise to himself.

I would say that for the younger musicians, technical proficiency is necessary and a given these days. But the study and the way you function in society, your beliefs and the way you live, that is where you will find a real musician, a real artist.

I want to be a real artist to consumers. I want to be the real thing for them.

I don’t believe any real artists have ever been non-political. They may have been insensitive to this particular plight or insensitive to that, but they were political, because that’s what an artist is-a politician.

Any magazine-cover hack can splash paint around wildly and call it a nightmare, or a witches sabbath or a portrait of the devil; but only a great painter can make such a thing really scare or ring true. That’s because only a real artist knows the anatomy of the terrible, or the physiology of fear.

Unlearning is the choice, conscious or unconscious, of any real artist. And it is the true sign of maturity.

Why is it every other person you meet says they’re an artist? A real artist doesn’t need to gas on about it, he doesn’t have time. He does his work and sweats it out in silence, and no one can help him at all.