Quotes About Successful Artists

“I've always felt that a lot of modern art is a con, and that the most successful painters are often better salesmen and promoters than they are artists.”

— Donald J. Trump

“By starving myself into society's beauty ideal, I had compromised my success, my independence, and my quality of life. Being overweight was really no different. It was just the "f- you" response to the same pressure. I was still responding to the pressure to comply to the fashion industry's standards of beauty, just in the negative sense. I was still answering to their demands when really I shouldn't have been listening to them at all. The images of stick-thin prepubescent girls never should have had power over me. I should've had my sights set on successful businesswomen and successful female artists, authors, and politicians to emulate. Instead I stupidly and pointlessly just wanted to be considered pretty. I squandered my brain and my talent to squeeze into a size 2 dress while my male counterparts went to work on making money, making policy, making a difference.”

— Portia De Rossi

“There is nothing fiercer than a failed artist. The energy remains, but, having no outlet, it implodes in a great black fart of rage which smokes up all the inner windows of the soul. Horrible as successful artists often are, there is nothing crueler or more vain than a failed artist.”

— Erica Jong

“The one thing I've learned in the last ten years is that successful artists don't get paid to write and sing songs, they get paid for the psychological roller coaster they're going to have to ride. That's the hard work.”

— Enrique Iglesias

“I hope my work has inspired young artists. I have always tried to maintain my freedom as an artist and I feel it is one of the main reasons I have been successful.”

— Frank Frazetta

“I have just returned from Arenas and feel very tired. His Excellency loaded me with a thousand honours; I have painted his portrait and that of his wife and boy and girl with unexpected success, for other artists had been there previously and not been successful.”

— Francisco Goya

“All I tell artists is, 'Do what you love. Never let anybody talk you into changing what your musical idea is just to try to get a hit, because you're chasing your tail that way. It's not going to happen, and if you're successful, you have to do it the rest of your life. Stay true to it and do it for the sake of the art.'”

— Gloria Estefan

“When I went to Pixar, I became aware of a great divide. Tech companies don't understand creativity. They don't appreciate intuitive thinking, like the ability of an A&R guy at a music label to listen to a hundred artists and have a feel for which five might be successful. And they think that creative people just sit around on couches all day and are undisciplined, because they've not seen how driven and disciplined the creative folks at places like Pixar are. On the other hand, music companies are completely clueless about technology. They think they can just go out and hire a few tech folks. But that would be like Apple trying to hire people to produce music. We'd get second-rate A&R people, just like the music companies ended up with second-rate tech people. I'm one of the few people who understands how producing technology requires intuition and creativity, and how producing something artistic takes real discipline.”

— Walter Isaacson

“I want to talk to the bullied kids of the world. Tell them to hang on, it will get better. Know that an 'Iron Chef,' actors, musicians, artists and all successful people have probably been bullied in their life. And the best part of your life is yet to come. Whatever it takes to live, do it!”

— Cat Cora

“I think there's a huge lack of political artists in America, and I think it really speaks to our consumeristic culture and how people are driven to be financially successful here. It's such a shame that we don't have people who are more inspired than that.”

— Corin Tucker

“The images of stick-thin prepubescent girls never should have had power over me. I should've had my sights set on successful businesswomen and successful female artists, authors, and politicians to emulate. Instead I stupidly and pointlessly just wanted to be considered pretty. I squandered my brain and my talent to squeeze into a size 2 dress while my male counterparts went to work on making money, making policy, making a difference. I”

— Portia De Rossi

“I don't think successful musicians were really put on this planet in order to have a great time, pat themselves on the back and say, 'Oh, what a clever boy I am!' I think that, like most artists, we were put on the planet to suffer just a little. And we do.”

— Ian Anderson

“Marlene Dumas is one of the two or three most successful female artists alive, if you judge by prices. I've never reviewed her work, because I find nothing in it to get excited about no matter how hard I look.”

— Jerry Saltz

“The people who are competing business-wise out there want what other successful labels and artists have. I don't want what they have; I want my own path, my own sound, my own identity. Record labels care nothing about identity or artistic freedom, they want good business.”

— Joe Nichols

“I was really inspired by these larger-than-life female artists like Lee Bontecou and Eva Hesse and Yvonne Rainier and the incredible Lynda Benglis. There were many women who were really driven and became successful, who were part of essential paradigm shifts, despite the fact that the art world was still dominated by men.”

— Rachel Kushner

“I would like to see myself with some successful albums, and I'd love to be working with new artists as well as continuing to release my own material. I'd also like to be settled in a lovely place with a lovely partner and gorgeous mini ginger Jess!”

— Jess Glynne

“Independent content these days can be more successful than previously because of the power of social media. However, there are still systems in place to make sure independent artists don't get as far as signed ones.”

— Lilly Singh

“I think that there will always be artists out there who think they need to sign a major label deal in order to be successful. And that machine is what is going to work for them - there's tons of examples of pop stars who need that machine.”

— Macklemore

“The purpose of arts education is not to produce more artists, though that is a byproduct. The real purpose of arts education is to create complete human beings capable of leading successful and productive lives in a free society.”

— Dana Gioia

“I think the biggest lesson is the common one that gets in the way of most of us as artists - there are these messages in society that if you aren't hitting certain metrics, then you're not successful and you're not valid.”

— Lela Loren

“The art of compromise centers on the willingness to give up something in order to get something else in return. Successful artists get more than they give up.”

— Howard Raiffa

“[The people who run things] are so successful in the way they do it now. They could buy me off with a couple of vintage prints, they could have you do an ad, or give you a ribbon ... In capitalist countries they reward artists because we're ineffectual.”

— Danny Lyon

“I think a lot of the more successful artists of our time basically have barracudas for managers”

— Robben Ford

“People want to be successful, and they want to be acknowledged for what they do. Sometimes they make really great art and aren't. Historically, the best artists weren't. But their work survived.”

— Devendra Banhart

“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

“There are no guidelines for what happens when you get successful as an artist. My heroes were artists like Acconci, and he didn't make any money. That's what I thought success was.”

— Robert Longo

“I've had far more success than I ever expected. But I do think that a lot of successful artists have an aim to be successful, even if they don't outwardly sound like it. I never really expected success.”

— Jim Shaw

“In the world of comics, Jack Kirby and Will Eisner may have been more influential artists, but Joe Kubert was its most influential man. Even if he were to be remembered solely for his body of illustration work, he'd still be one of the greats, but by opening the Kubert School in 1976, he was able to personally mentor and educate literally thousands of successful artists who owe their careers to his teachings.”

— Mark Waid

“Is it better to strive for success as a self-representing artist or try to get your feet wet in the gallery world? That is such a common question these days among artists. I truly believe that most artists will come to a cross road where they will have to decide on which route to take as it's extremely hard to be successful in both worlds.”

— Matt LeBlanc

“A lot of artists still will not get that far. And get that far and be as successful. So, it's a great thing for me, and hopefully I can make it to number 10. And then I would want to start managing other artists, 'cause I think the best manager is an artist, his, or herself, that has been in the business and been successful and knows the ins and outs of the business.”

— Ginuwine

“The overscaled compositions being produced by so many abstract painters, which are full of movement and use of color, are ideal example, ideal transformations of an entire wall and entire room ... There is no denying that one of the major attractions of these successful large compositions is their structural decorative use in the contemporary scene ... That these large canvases can be superbly decorative may not be considered complimentary by some of the artists involved ...”

— Van Day Truex

“Writers and musicians know well the importance of extensive reading for successful writing or extensive listening for musical composition. Likewise, visual artists ... understand that successful artistic creativity depends upon extensive visual exposure.”

— Paul Laseau

“Success for an artist is completed work. Very successful artists complete a lot of work. It's that simple.”

— Paul Russo

“Cuban artists had, for a while, a privileged position within Cuba that is probably going to become slightly less restricted to them. I think they'll continue to join the international art world, so those people who are extremely successful will become even more so and those who are struggling will continue to struggle.”

— Rachael Price

“I'm interested in confronting police brutality and police abuse of cracking down on street performers and street artists, but also in valorizing street art as legitimate performance within the artistic sphere, where it's so often conflated with pan-handling and begging and not "successful" art. I want to change laws around street performance.”

— Kalan Sherrard

“Everybody that wants to be successful should always be careful of what you wish for. A lot of artists and entertainers want to put the genie back in the bottle and wish they could go back to being what they were.”

— Ice Cube

“Today the influences of your society pressure you to be successful before your time. They are pulling you down. They have pulled you down, you big, sweet, magnificent, young, potential artists. They have pulled you down so far that you are on the verge of destruction. Only you don't know it because you want to be a success”

— Stella Adler

“It's understandable that the music companies that are comprised of people that are successful by making good creative decisions - they have to decide which out of fifty artists is the next hot one, with no data to go from. It's an intuitive process, and that's what they do well when they're successful. They don't understand technology.”

— Steve Jobs

“Sheer egoism ... Writers share this characteristic with scientists, artists, politicians, lawyers, soldiers, successful businessmen - in short, with the whole top crust of humanity.”

— George Orwell

“To a certain extent that happens with all kinds of successful writers and artists and celebrities, but there is also something about the form of memoir that creates an eerie reader space of intimacy that is only "real" in the space of the text.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch

“Abstract expression is so solid, so successful and recognizable, but there's a mystery about the artists that goes into it, a fetishism about the artists themselves and who they were.”

— Keanu Reeves