Aleksandar Hemon Quotes

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.

I don't believe that artists really are interested in money. That's not the motivation for art.

I never sold any of my pieces. I had all the money I wanted. Then I would have lost my sculptures and just had more money.

It's not always about huge giant commercial success. It's about art.

The saying "the business of art is different than the purpose of art" makes sense, and what are you going to do about that? You have some obligation to get the work out there, you believe in it enough that it should be out in the public, but of course it goes through a system that takes it pretty far away from the reasons you made them.

The arts are not a way to make a living.

One cannot create an art that speaks to men when one has nothing to say.

If you work at rap and look at it as an art, the money will come. But if you try to get the money, it'll just always be shallow.

All good art is in the nature of a letter written to amuse a sick friend. Too much art, particularly in our time, is only a letter written to oneself.

Is it the obligation of great art to be continually interesting? I think not.

Art for art's sake? I should think so, and more so than ever at the present time. It is the one orderly product which our middling race has produced. It is the cry of a thousand sentinels, the echo from a thousand labyrinths, it is the lighthouse which cannot be hidden. It is the best evidence we can have of our dignity.

One cannot demand of art that it pay you in any other way than in the satisfaction of the work itself.

When art is really great, it's really powerful, can really do something to you, make you feel more alive and make you feel more connected to something. If you don't feel like that when you do it, and you just make a movie to make money, that would be pretty boring to me. I just wouldn't do it. That would be like sitting in an office, which I don't want to do.

I'm surprised when the work appears beautiful, and very pleased. And I think work can be very good and very successful without being able to call it beautiful, although I'm not clear about that. The work is good when it has a certain completeness; and when it's got a certain completeness, then it's beautiful.

To labor in the arts for any reason other than love is prostitution.

True art must be evidence of happiness, contentment and purity of its authors.

Art is not the spiritual side of business.

This is the thing: Art is more important than making a show, something that amuses people. Art is something that needs to give to the public, to the actors, to the artist - to give something that makes life the paradise it can be. Life can be a paradise. Still, I believe that. Even if there is Trump, there can be a paradise.

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time.

Popular success is a wonderful gift if it happens, but like money, it's not the motivation. The effort to create a work of art that is true and potentially lasting, that is the very best work of art you can create at that point in your life - a book that may only reach or move a few people but will seem to people somehow transformative. That's the ideal; that's always the motivation.

If I make two movies my entire life, and they're two movies that - whether they make a lot of money or two people go to see them - they speak of me, then I consider them incredibly successful. I don't need to be Steven Spielberg.

If it turns out to be a hit, well, good luck dealing with fame. And if it's not a hit and you can still survive and make music you believe in, well, then you're truly blessed. I think that's where we are now.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

I am not a commercial industry creator. I don't believe in making art to make money.

Today a picture has value if it makes a lot of money. Myself, I declare I want to make a picture to lose money. Really! I want to lose money.