Thomas Hardy Quotes

If artists do have ideas, they're often not great.

I think that an artist should be a skilled craftsman.

When art is about craftsmanship, then guys like me don't make it as artists.

The old-fashioned idea that the simple piling up of experiences, one on top of another, can make you an artist, is, of course, so much rubbish. If acting were just a matter of experience, then any busy harlot could make Garbo's Camille pale.

The artist who is not also a craftsman is no good; but, alas, most of our artists are nothing else.

I felt that everything is beautiful, but that which man tries intentionally to make beautiful; that the work of an ordinary bricklayer is more valid than the artwork of all but a very few artists.

We must grant the artist his subject, his idea, his donn´e: our criticism is applied only to what he makes of it.

If art is any good, it has so much of a longer trajectory than one night. Contemporary art is separate from art openings. In the end, it depends on the strength of ideas in each piece.

What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.

It is not your paintings I like, it is your painting.

It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism.

Art is expression, and to have high expression you must have something high to express.

We don't really want to think that the artist is only very skilled, that he has merely devoted his life to perfecting a certain set of intelligible skills.

I don't see art as entertainment.

They[ Lana and Andy Wachowski]are true artists. They really are trying to say something and trying to create something original, and there aren't that many people who do that.

I do remember at my very first opening in 1979 another artist coming up to me, and he was haranguing me, saying, "Did you really intend for these things to be so dumb? You just put it there and took a picture of it." He wouldn't let it go. So that's what made me think about the dumbness aspect more.

As an aspiring artist, you should strive for originality of vision. Have something to say and a fresh way of saying it. No story is worth the writing, no picture worth the making, if it’s not the work of the imagination.

Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.

When an artist paints a picture he does not want you to consider his personality as represented in that picture - he wants you to look at the beauty of that picture. No one cares who has painted the picture as long as it is beautiful.

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.

The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of Artist

The framework of the artist's ideas is clearly only that which he is forever seeking for universality, and must be far wider than the framework of the ideals of the patriot.

I'm making entertainment, but I'm making art. This is my art. Hopefully, it's profitable, hopefully it makes money, but at the end of the day I want it to be remembered for its artistic value as well as its entertainment value.

The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out.

In other things the knowing artist may Judge better than the people; but a play, (Made for delight, and for no other use) If you approve it not, has no excuse.