I am an artist… I am here to live out loud.
—Emile Zola (1840–1902) French Novelist
In the fabric of space and in the nature of matter, as in a great work of art, there is, written small, the artist’s signature.
—Carl Sagan (1934–96) American Astronomer
I would awake at sunrise, and without washing or dressing sit down before the easel which stood right beside my bed. Thus the first image I saw on awakening was the painting I had begun, as it was the last I saw in the evening when I retired … I spent the whole day seated before my easel, my eyes staring fixedly, trying to ‘see’, like a medium (very much so indeed), the images that would spring up in my imagination. Often I saw these images exactly situated in the painting. Then, at the point commanded by them, I would paint, paint with the hot taste in my mouth that panting hunting dogs must have at the moment when they fasten their teeth into the game killed that very instant by a well-aimed shot. At times I would wait whole hours without any such images occuring. Then, not painting, I would remain in suspense, holding up one paw, from which the brush hung motionless, ready to pounce again upon the oneiric landscape of my canvas the moment the next explosion of my brain brought a new victim of my imagination bleeding to the ground.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
The artist is a receptacle for the 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.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
Taste! It doesn’t exist. An artist makes beautiful things without being aware of it.
—Edgar Degas (1834–1917) French Painter, Sculpture, Printer maker, Artist
This comes from dangling from the ceiling
—Michelangelo (1475–1564) Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Poet, Engineer
Human life itself may be almost pure chaos, but the work of the artist is to take these handfuls of confusion and disparate things, things that seem to be irreconcilable, and put them together in a frame to give them some kind of shape and meaning.
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980) American Short-Story Writer, Novelist
The best artist has that thought alone
Which is contained within the marble shell;
The sculptor’s hand can only break the spell
To free the figures slumbering in the stone
—Michelangelo (1475–1564) Italian Painter, Sculptor, Architect, Poet, Engineer
My drawings have been described as pre-internationalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.
—James Thurber
Painting is a magical process that I like, where you conjure something out of nothing; you get a little idea that leads you through … You can go into a trance while you’re doing it, so it’s a nice contrast to real life.
—Paul McCartney (b.1942) English Pop Singer, Songwriter
Singing has always seemed to me the most perfect means of expression. It is so spontaneous. And after singing, I think the violin. Since I cannot sing, I paint.
—Georgia O’Keeffe (1887–1986) American Painter
The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world. In this long vigil he often has to vary his methods of stimulation; but in this long vigil he is also himself striving against a continual tendency to sleep.
—G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English Journalist, Novelist, Essayist, Poet
In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.
—Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French Photographer, Journalist
A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.
—James Thurber
Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
Sooner or later people will learn to recognize your worth.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
It is my misfortune – and probably my delight – to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don’t go with the basket of fruit! … I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things – so much the worse for them. They just have to put up with it.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
The artist belongs to his work, not the work to the artist.
—Novalis (1772–1801) German Romantic Poet, Novelist
To the artist there is never anything ugly in nature.
—Auguste Rodin (1840–1917) French Sculptor
There are two men inside the The Artist poet and the craftsman. One is born a poet. One becomes a craftsman.
—Emile Zola (1840–1902) French Novelist
But I owe something to Vincent, and that is, in the consciousness of having been useful to him, the confirmation of my own original ideas about painting. And also, at difficult moments, the remembrance that one finds others unhappier than oneself.
—Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) French Post-Impressionist Painter
If one feels the need of something grand, something infinite, something that makes one feel aware of God, one need not go far to find it. I think that I see something deeper, more infinite, more eternal than the ocean in the expression of the eyes of a little baby when it wakes in the morning and coos or laughs because it sees the sun shining on its cradle.
—Vincent van Gogh (1853–90) Dutch Painter
Great artists are people who find the way to be themselves in their art. Any sort of pretension induces mediocrity in art and life alike.
—Margot Fonteyn (1919–91) English Classical Ballet Dancer
Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it. And his hope for other people is that they will also make it exist by observing it. I call it “creative observation.” Creative viewing.
—William S. Burroughs (1914–97) American Novelist, Poet, Short Story Writer, Painter
An artist cannot fail; it is a success to be one.
—Charles Cooley (1864–1929) American Sociologist
In my prints I try to show that we live in a beautiful and orderly world and not in a chaos without norms, as we sometimes seem to. My subjects are also often playful. I cannot help mocking all our unwavering certainties. It is, for example, great fun deliberately to confuse two and three dimensions, the plane and space, or to poke fun at gravity. Are you sure that a floor cannot also be a ceiling? Are you absolutely certain that you go up when you walk up a staircase? Can you be definite that it is impossible to eat your cake and have it?
—M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch Graphic Artist
All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis.
—Upton Sinclair (1878–1968) American Novelist
For the serious artist does not satisfy needs
—Anthony Burgess (1917–93) English Novelist, Critic, Composer
Picasso’s mother held great ambitions for him when he was a child. She instructed him: If you become a soldier, you’ll be a general. If you become a monk, you’ll end up as Pope”. Instead,” Picasso quipped, “I became a painter and became a Picasso”.
—Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) Spanish Painter, Sculptor, Artist
The role of the artist I now understood as that of revealing through the world-surfaces the implicit forms of the soul, and the great agent to assist the artist was the myth.
—Joseph Campbell (1904–87) American Mythologist, Writer, Lecturer