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Artist Quotes

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Artist Quotes

“Artists no longer starve in garrets. Some people may think this is not wholly a good thing, that being an artist has become too comfortable, at least in the West. I'm not sure I agree. It's a mark of civilization to encourage the arts and the life of the mind.”

People Thinking Mind May Art Artist Civilization Comfortable Mark Agree Good Things West Not Sure Being An Artist

Author:J. M. Coetzee

“There is a single thread of attitude, a single direction of flow, that joins our present time to it's early burgeoning in Mediterranean civilization...”

Artist Attitude Civilization Flow Thread Present Time

Author:Arthur Erickson

“In the cycle of a great civilization, the artist begins as priest, and ends as a clown or buffoon.”

Ends Artist Civilization Cycles Priests Clown Buffoons

Book:The End of Christendom

Source: The End of Christendom

“The habits of every animal are, at least in the eyes of man, constantly similar in all ages. But the habits, the clothes, the words and the dwelling of a prince, a banker, an artist, a bourgeois, a priest and a pauper, are wholly dissimilar and change at the will of civilizations.”

Men Eye Age Artist Animal Habit Civilization Clothes Priests Bankers Dwelling Bourgeois

Author:Honore de Balzac

“It is dangerous it seems to me for a civilization when there is a complete abyss betewen people in general and the artists. Or is it always so? The poets who are most ardently on the people's side write in such a way that the people cannot see rhyme nor reason to their work.”

People Way Writing Reason Seems Artist Sides Dangerous Poet Civilization Rhyme Abyss

Author:May Sarton

“Everybody's an artist. Everybody's God. It's just that they're inhibited. I believe in people so much that if the whole of civilization is burned so we don't have any memory of it, even then people will start to build their own art. It is a necessity -- a function. We don't need history.”

People Ifs Needs Believe Art Whole Artist I Believe Memories Civilization Function I Believe In Burned

Author:Yoko Ono

“Fear is the deep motive of abstract art - fear of a repellent civilization which is dominated by the power of things. ... who can be surprised if, more sensitive than the others, the artist is terrified by the power things have acquired over us?”

Ifs Art Artist Civilization Sensitive Motive Abstract Terrified Abstract Art

Author:Storm Jameson

“As a great democratic society, we have a special responsibility to the arts. For art is the great democrat, calling forth creative genius from every sector of society, disregarding race or religion or wealth or color. What freedom alone can bring is the liberation of the human mind and a spirit which finds its greatest flowering in the free society. I see of little more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than the full recognition of the place of the artist.”