Norman Rockwell, the Brueghel of the 20th century bourgeoisie, the Holbein of Jell-O ads and magazine covers; by common assent, the most American artist of all.

-Adler,Jerry
  On the opening of the Norman Rockwell Museum at Stockbridge, Massachusetts. In Newsweek,12  Apr.

Perhaps the artist who seeks dignity above all in his 'historia', ought to represent very few figures; for as paucity of words imparts majesty to a prince, provided histhoughts and orders are understood, so the presence of only the strictly necessary numbers of bodies confers dignity on a picture.

-Alberti, Leon Battista
  On Painting (translated by Cecil Grayson).

Let me point out, if it has escaped your notice, that what an artist does, is fail.

-Barthelme, Donald
  Sadness,'The Sandman'.

Materially make the life of the artist sufficiently miserable to be unattractive, and no one will take to art save those in whom the divine daemon is absolute.

-Bell, (Arthur) Clive Howard
  Art, pt.5, ch.1.

The artist is extremely lucky who is presented with the worst possible ordeal which will not actually kill him.

-Berryman,John originally John Allyn Smith
  Interview in The Paris Review, winter issue.

The function of the artist is to disturb. His duty is to arousethesleeper, toshakethe complacent pillars ofthe world.He reminds the world of its dark ancestry, and shows the world its present, and points the way to its new birth.He isat oncetheproduct and thepreceptorof his time.

-Bethune, Norman
  Letter from Madrid, 5 May. Quoted in Ted  Allen and Sydney Gordon The Scalpel, The Sword (1952).

The manwho never in his mind and thoughtstravelled to heaven is no artist.

-Blake,William
c.1808  Annotations to Sir Joshua Reynolds' Discourses.

Glory is to God what style is to an artist† To behold God's glory, to sense his style, is the closest you can get this side of Paradise, just as to read King Lear is the closest you can get to Shakespeare. 165

-Buechner, (Carl) Frederick
  Wishful Thinking.

Nothing exists until or unless it is observed. An artist is making something exist by observing it.

-Burroughs,William S(eward)
  Painting and Guns,'The Creative Observer'.

Art is a form of communication that insinuates.We expect the artist to have more to say than what he communicated and suspect that what he said was a subterfuge for hiding something.

-Calas, Nicolas
  Art in the Age of Risk.

Remember I'm an artist. And you know what that means in a court of law. Next worse to an actress.

-Cary, (Arthur) Joyce Lunel
  The Horse's Mouth, ch.14.

The artist must possess the courageous soul that dares and defies.

-Chopin, Kate (Katherine) ne¤  e  O'Flaherty
  The Awakening, ch.39.

It isclosing time inthegardens oftheWest and fromnow on an artist will be judged only by the resonance of his solitude or the quality of his despair.

-Connolly, Cyril Vernon
  Horizon, no.120^1, Dec1949^  Jan1950 (double issue, the final issue of the journal).

An artist's first responsibility is to himself.

-Davis, Miles Dewey, III
Ebony,  Jan.

You could be a great musician, an innovative and important artist, but nobodycared if youdidn't makethe white people who were in control some money.

-Davis, Miles Dewey, III
  Autobiography, ch.10.

An artist who has travelled on a steam train, driven an automobile,or flowninanairplanedoesn'tfeelthesame way about form and space as one who has not.

-Davis, Stuart
  'Is There a Revolution in the  Arts?', in Bulletin of  America's Town Meeting of the Air, vol.5, no.19 (19 Feb).

Two qualities essential for the artist: moralityand perspective.

-Diderot, Denis
^81 Pense¤  es de¤  tache¤ e s sur la peinture.

The artist is a spectator, indifferent or impassioned, at the birth of his work, and observes the phases of its development.

-Ernst, Max
Quoted in Saranne  Alexandrian Surrealist  Art (1970).

An artist is a creature driven by demons.

-Faulkner,William Harrison
  Interview in Paris Review, Spring.

The aimof everyartist istoarrest motion, which islife, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life.

-Faulkner,William Harrison
  Interview in Paris Review, Spring.