Good Artist Quotes

• A Good artist has less time than ideas.

  Martin Kippenberger

  Art, Ideas, Artist

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• Every good painter paints what he is.

  Jackson Pollock

  Art, Paint, Artist

  Jackson Pollock, Bernice Rose, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1980). “Jackson Pollock, drawing into painting”, Icon

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• The chief enemy of creativity is 'good' sense.

  Pablo Picasso

  Life, Motivational, Beautiful

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• To be an artist you have to give up everything, including the desire to be a good artist.

  Jasper Johns

  Inspirational, Life, Beautiful

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• Bad artists copy. Good artists steal.

  Pablo Picasso

  Art, Creative, Stealing

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• Good artists copy, great artists steal.

  Pablo Picasso

  Creativity, Artist, Small Jobs

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• Picasso had a saying - 'good artists copy, great artists steal' - and we have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

  Walter Isaacson

  Inspirational, Artist, Small Jobs

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Walter Isaacson Great Innovators e-book boxed set: Steve Jobs, Benjamin Franklin, Einstein”, p.147, Simon and Schuster

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• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.

  T. S. Eliot

  Stealing Things, Immature, Different

  1920 The Sacred Wood,'Philip Massinger'.

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• We have always been shameless about stealing great ideas.

  Steve Jobs

  Ideas, Best Job, Small Jobs

  "Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires". PBS Documentary, 1996.

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  Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.

  Andy Warhol

  Art, Hate, Creativity

  Christopher Makos, Andy Warhol (2003). “Warhol Memoir”

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• A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time, or alien in language, or diverse in interest.

  T. S. Eliot

  Artist, Immature, Aliens

  T. S. Eliot (1998). “The Sacred Wood and Major Early Essays”, p.72, Courier Corporation

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• An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

  Andy Warhol

  Art, Business, Thinking

  Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) (1975) ch. 10

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• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Writing, Reading Poetry

  The Sacred Wood "Philip Massinger" (1920)

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• One of the surest tests of the superiority or inferiority of a poet is the way in which a poet borrows. Immature poets imitate mature poets steal bad poets deface what they take and good poets make it into something better or at least something different. The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique utterly different than that from which it is torn the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion. A good poet will usually borrow from authors remote in time or alien in language or diverse in interest.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Unique, Stealing Things

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• The good poet welds his theft into a whole of feeling which is unique, utterly different from that from which it was torn; the bad poet throws it into something which has no cohesion.

  T. S. Eliot

  Unique, Feelings, Immature

  "Essays on Elizabethan Drama".

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• Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

  Edgar Degas

  Art, Knowledge, Doe

  "Artists on Art: From the XIV to the XX Century". Book edited by Robert Goldwater, 1945.

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• Let the writer take up surgery or bricklaying if he is interested in technique. There is no mechanical way to get the writing done, no shortcut. The young writer would be a fool to follow a theory. Teach yourself by your own mistakes; people learn only by error. The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

  William Faulkner

  Mistake, Believe, Writing

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• And every good artist knows that the gift comes from somewhere else, and it's there for a reason, and that's to make the world a better place.

  James Lee Burke

  Artist, Somewhere Else, World

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• The good artist believes that nobody is good enough to give him advice. He has supreme vanity. No matter how much he admires the old writer, he wants to beat him.

  William Faulkner

  Believe, Artist, Vanity

  "William Faulkner, The Art of Fiction No. 12". Interview with Jean Stein, www.theparisreview.org. 1956.

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• A good artist is willing to die many times over. What's funny is, I've died so many times.

  Billy Corgan

  Artist, Willing, Died

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• What an artist does, is fail. Any reading of the literature, (I mean the literature of artistic creation), however summary, will persuade you instantly that the paradigmatic artistic experience is that of failure. The actualization fails to meet, equal, the intuition. There is something "out there" which cannot be brought "here". This is standard. I don't mean bad artists, I mean good artists. There is no such thing as a "successful artist" (except, of course, in worldly terms).

  Donald Barthelme

  Art, Reading, Mean

  "The Sandman". "Sadness". Book by Donald Barthelme, 1972.

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• A real good artist is basically a grown-up kid, who never kills the kid. What we call being an adult is basically about killing the kid. People think you have to forget about the kid to become an adult and deal with grown-up problems. But, that's bullshit. We are still kids. It's the same, you just grow up. You're a kid with more experience.

  Quentin Dupieux

  Growing Up, Real, Kids

  "Quentin Dupieux Talks WRONG COPS, Fast-Paced Shoots, and His Secret Project with Marilyn Manson". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. December 25, 2013.

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• I think any good artist - and I'm not saying that I am one - takes notes and should first emulate their heroes and then try to move beyond them.

  Patrick Stump

  Hero, Moving, Thinking

  Source: chicagoist.com

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• I like to imagine that the Neanderthals were all really good artists.

  Jim Drain

  Artist, Neanderthals, Imagine

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• There's something peculiar about artists. They have ups and downs... After a while everything you do is just wonderful... then you slide back. If you're a good artist you're going to go down. And then it's up to you.

  Milton Resnick

  Artist, Peculiar, Up To You

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