If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.
John UpdikeRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes that an artist's value goes beyond technical skills; it involves deeper emotional and conceptual engagement.
John Updikeβs quote suggests that the perception of an artist should extend beyond just their technical proficiency and dedication to honing certain skills. It implies that true artistry encompasses a deeper emotional and intellectual commitment that resonates with audiences on multiple levels, inviting a richer understanding of the artist's work and intentions.
Themes
ArtistSkillsArtistryCreativityEmotion
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared during an art exhibition to encourage viewers to appreciate the deeper emotions behind the artwork.
More from John Updike
All quotes βDost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that's the stuff life is made of. _x000D_ _x000D_ Suspect each moment, for it is a thief, tiptoeing away with more than it brings.
John UpdikeRead
Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.
John UpdikeRead
But it is just two lovers, holding hands and in a hurry to reach their car, their locked hands a starfish leaping through the dark.
John UpdikeRead
The reader knows the writer better than he knows himself; but the writer's physical presence is light from a star that has moved on.
John UpdikeRead
To guarantee the individual maximum freedom within a social frame of minimal laws ensures - if not happiness - its hopeful pursuit.
John UpdikeRead
Similar quotes
The basis for poetry and scientific discovery is the ability to comprehend the unlike in the like and the like in the unlike.
Jacob BronowskiRead
All art speaks in signs and symbols. No one can explain how it happens that the artist can waken to life in us the existence that he has seen and lives through. No artistic speech is the adequate expression of what it represents; its vital force comes from what is unspoken in it.
Albert SchweitzerRead
I don't go into the studio with the idea of 'saying' something. What I do is face the blank canvas and put a few arbitrary marks on it that start me on some sort of dialogue.
Richard DiebenkornRead
Every photo, every 'ONCE' in time is also the beginning of a story starting 'once upon a time...' Every photo is the first frame of a movie.
Wim WendersRead
She died with a knife in her hand in her kitchen, where she had cooked for fifty years, and the death was solemnly listed in the newspaper as that of an artist.
Janet FlannerRead
When I have trouble writing, I step outside my studio into the garden and pull weeds until my mind clears--I find weeding to be the best therapy there is for writer's block.
Irving StoneRead