Artistic Autonomy Quotes

Sometimes being an actor is being a song in someone else's mixtape, so I really understand why more and more actors are making films of their own.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

With my career, everything I do is me. There's no one that handles telling me what I should be about or how I should dress or anything. I'm hands on with absolutely everything. When I'm writing a song, I'm already thinking of the visual for the song and I'm already thinking of what I'm going to wear in that visual and what I'm going to wear when I perform. It all goes hand in hand. Everything I do is just me expressing different sides of myself.

I'm not an industry artist - I'm an artist in the industry.

I don't know, I really try not to pay attention to comparisons, 'cause I'm my own artist. I try to build my own sound.

In this new world where art is willfully misinterpreted to score points and to distract, simply doing the work of an artist has become a political act.

I played more of an advisory role with Public Enemy. I really trusted them to make the music that they wanted to make, and the way The Bomb Squad worked with the... they created their whole own world of music.

Most female artists - to do what you have to do and to be as honest as you have to be, to be as selfish as you have to be, as tunnel-visioned as you have to be to make art, not entertainment - you can't compromise, really.

I was being an artist, being sensitive and technical as artists are. I'm sure Leonardo Da Vinci did that. Artists don't always feel the same as others feel about their work.

The artist himself is actually the subject in everything after, say, 1900. Eventually, art becomes so removed from the community that you have to know about the artist before you can even look at the painting, because there is a conceptual idea going on.

What I don't like is when people feel like they can box an artist into who they think an artist should be.

I paint what I see and not what others like to see.

Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.

After my years in Hollywood, I got tired of apologizing for work that really wasn't mine to begin with.

Any system that sees aesthetics as irrelevant, that separates the artist from his product, that fragments the work of the individual, or creates by committee, or makes mincemeat of the creative process will, in the long run, diminish not only the product but the maker as well.

As long as it feels valid to me and feels sincere, I'll do what I do under the moniker of Nine Inch Nails if it's appropriate. I would hate to think I would ever be in a position where I'm faking it to get a paycheck.

I wanted a label that reflects the times... a center for artists who want to express themselves. That's what makes Interscope unique. It's about freedom.

I never read anything concerning my work. I feel that criticism is a letter to the public which the author, since it is not directed to him, does not have to open and read.

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

One thing is for sure-none of the arts flourishes on censorship and repression. And by this time it should be evident that the American public is capable of doing its own censoring.

I'm from Atlanta, but I don't really consider myself an 'Atlanta rapper.'

I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.

I don't work to any commissions. I do what I want to do.

'Faces' became more than a film. It became a way of life, a film against the authorities and the powers that prevent people from expressing themselves the way they want to, something that can't be done in America, that can't be done without money.

What happens with artists, or people who start off doing things for the right reasons, is that you slowly start to paint yourself into a corner by doing what people outside of the creative world are asking you to do, and I think that's antithetical to being an artist.