Renaissance Artist Quotes

Put yourself in the position of an up-and-coming artist living in early-sixteenth-century Italy. Now imagine trying to distinguish yourself from the other artists living in your town: Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, or Titian. Is it any wonder that the Italian High Renaissance lasted only 30 years? ~ Jerry Saltz

I've been strongly influenced, in technique as well as subject matter, by some of the early 20th-century book illustrators - Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac in particular, Burne-Jones and other Pre-Raphaelites, and the Arts-&-Crafts movement they engendered. I'm continually inspired by Rembrandt, Breughel (I've wondered whether his brilliant "Tower of Babel" had inspired Tolkien's description of Minas Tyrith), Hieronymous Bosch, Albrecht Durer, and Turner; it's not necessarily that they influence my work in any particular direction, more that their example raises my spirits, re-affirms my belief in the power of images to move and delight us, and shows me how much further I have to go, how much is possible. Having visited Venice and Florence for the first time, I am besotted with the Italian Renaissance artists - Botticelli, Bellini, da Vinci and others. Their work is calm, controlled, and yet each face and landscape contains such passion. In Botticelli's paintings, every pebble and every leaf is rendered with a religious devotion; there is reverence inherent in paying such close attention to every stone, turning painting itself into a form of worship, an act of prayer. ~ Alan Lee (artist)

I've gradually fooled myself into becoming a real painter ... I really just like to sit in my air-conditioned Rome painting studio surrounded by Medieval and Renaissance architecture and to hold a tube of Alizarin Madder Lake in my artist's hand and marvel at the shiny goop inside. ~ Mark Kostabi

During freedom struggle, It were authors and artists who made the Nation stand with their pen, and now their pen can create an environment of renaissance when Independent India is on the path of Good Governance. ~ Narendra Modi

Not without deep pain do we admit to ourselves that the artists of all ages have in their highest flights carried to heavenly transfiguration precisely those conceptions that we now recognize as false: they are the glorifiers of the religious and philosophical errors of humanity, and they could not have done this without their belief in the absolute truth of these errors. Now if the belief in such truth generally diminishes, if the rainbow colors at the outermost ends of human knowing and imagining fade: then the species of art that, like the Divina commedia, Raphael's pictures, Michelangelo's frescoes, the Gothic cathedrals, presupposes not only a cosmic, but also a metaphysical significance for art objects can never blossom again. A touching tale will come of this, that there was once such an art, such belief by artists. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To the memory of Vincent Van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, El Greco, and many others who came before me as well as those who will come after. We are one. Thank you. ~ Luther E. Vann

Renaissance artist Gregorio Comanini, has counseled the equivalent of Live an ordinary, regular life so you can be irregular and brilliant in your creativity. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

I'm looking to evolve the concept of the new renaissance artist, taking the world by storm through the art of public display and demonstration, with technical savvy, using cell phones and computers. ~ Perry Farrell

The witch-burnings did not take place during the "Dark Ages," as we commonly suppose. They occurred between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries– precisely during and following the Renaissance, that glorious period when, as we are taught, "men's" minds were being freed from bleakness and superstition. While Michelangelo was sculpting and Shakespeare writing, the witches were burning. The whole secular "Enlightenment," in fact, the male professions of doctor, lawyer, judge, artist, all rose from the ashes of the destroyed women's culture. Renaissance men were celebrating naked female beauty in their art, while women's bodies were being tortured and burned by the hundreds of thousands all around them. ~ Monica Sjoo Barbara Mor

You don't know Jay-Z's scedule. He's a renaissance man. ~ Aziz Ansari

Last time I checked, there were no Americans at all in Renaissance art. ~ Camille Paglia

I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I think there's some great stuff coming. I do feel that. I think we have reached our Harlem Renaissance. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Seance to renaissance. So it begins ~ Marilyn Manson

During the Renaissance, women were not allowed to attend art school. Everyone asks, where are the great women painters of the Renaissance? ~ Karen DeCrow

Every era of renaissance has come out of new freedoms for peoples. The coming renaissance will be greater than any in human history, for this time all the peoples of the earth will share in it. ~ Pearl S. Buck

If you see a Renaissance body, this is completely ugly in this time. Everybody has to be skinny. But the Renaissance body with incredible flow of the meat everywhere, it was beauty. ~ Marina Abramovic

It's a Renaissance, or put more simply, some you win, some you lose ~ Des Lynam

Unless there is a spiritual renaissance, the world will know no peace. ~ Dag Hammarskjold

You can't make a renaissance person anymore, because the range of what you would need to do is just impossible. But you could actually assemble a renaissance team."7 The integrative thinkers rely on their "renaissance teams" to broaden salience, maintain sophisticated causality, and create a holistic architecture in their drive for creative resolution. ~ Roger L. Martin

From 1940 to the present, the art world - and particularly Los Angeles - has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance. ~ Jeffrey Deitch

When I was young, I was interested in Renaissance art. ~ Sigmar Polke

We're lucky to be in the middle of a TV renaissance. It's the healthiest storytelling medium in our culture. ~ Nick Antosca

We need a renaissance of wonder. ~ E. Merrill Root

I'm a poet. I'm just a renaissance man in my heart. I can build shelves and I can write poetry. ~ Anthony Mackie

Culling is God's Natural Order. Ask yourself, What followed the Black Death? We all know the answer. The Renaissance. Rebirth. ~ Dan Brown

Patterned after an Italian Renaissance palace, it is 88 times as large and one millionth as valuable to the continuation of man. that Pentagon of traveling salesmen. ~ Norman Mailer

There should be a Transatlantic renaissance between the US and Europe based on shared prosperity, security, and values. ~ John F. Kerry

Aquinas brought an Aristotelian view of reason back into European culture, and lighted the way toward the Renaissance. ~ Ayn Rand

No artist knows everything (yea, even this artist - piss-artist, con-artist, body-artist) but since every artist knows more than he can tell, all art is lying by omission. ~ Glen Duncan

The Dark Ages gradually ended six centuries ago with the Renaissance, which seeded new ideas for a different world. The Renaissance ideal dominated our culture until three centuries ago, from the 14th to the 18th century, when it was superseded by modernism. Not surprisingly, this human ideal has almost been forgotten in our culture. The Renaissance, literally "re-birth", was a revival and rediscovery of classical Greek and Roman culture following the decline of culture, trade, and technology during the Dark Ages. ~ Jacob Lund Fisker

Eric Walrond, handsome, cosmopolitan, and beguilingly enigmatic, may have been the most promising literary talent of the Harlem Renaissance ... James Davis's finely written, beautifully paced Eric Walrond is a major biography of a fascinating figure. ~ David Levering Lewis

We have a great obligation not only to look after our own interests, but to engage and to make sure that this meeting is at the beginning of a renaissance of trust. ~ Klaus Schwab

I can't help but think that the way we punctuate now is the right way - that we are living in a punctuation renaissance. ~ Mary Norris

Since the Renaissance, people have had to get used to living their life on a random planet in the vast galaxy. ~ Jostein Gaarder

To implement a true urban renaissance, you first need a Grand Design elaborated by strong leadership . ~ Minoru Mori

We are fascinated by Ramses as Renaissance Christians were by the American Indians, those (human?) beings who had never known the word of Christ. ~ Jean Baudrillard

People never know what's going on while it's happening. You think, during the Renaissance, people called it 'The Renaissance'? ~ Anne Meara

The next time somebody announces that he plans to get Medieval on your ass, tell him you're going to get Renaissance on his gonads. ~ James K. Morrow

After the Dutch left Indonesia, after the Indonesians got loose in 1945, the freemen were not as widely used, but then they went through a real Renaissance where military dictatorship took over. ~ Joshua Oppenheimer

The Renaissance was a time of mercenary soldiers, ours is a time of mercenary labor. ~ Eric Hoffer

Warhol turned to photographs of stars, as the Renaissance turned to antiquities, to find images of gods. ~ David Sylvester

Whilst wishing to be associated with the current renaissance in Scottish art, I am actually a recessionist and have only joined to see if that's where the real money is. ~ Michael Marra

The pride taken by the Italians in their gifted women is among the most important facts in the history of their Renaissance. ~ Walter Shaw Sparrow

About the scientific revolution: it "outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes". ~ Herbert Butterfield

Marxism is like a classical building that followed the Renaissance; beautiful in its way, but incapable of growth. ~ Harold Macmillan

We will continue to count on your unwavering support and commitment to working with leaders of our continent in bringing about the desired renaissance of Africa. ~ Thabo Mbeki

Teller and I worked Renaissance Festivals and street performing - actually more real, no kidding around, Philadelphia street performing than we did Renaissance Festivals. ~ Penn Jillette

I love television. I think we're in a renaissance of epic proportion in television now. ~ Dennis Lehane

Now there is in a way a renaissance of modern dance - suddenly, it is more respected and discovered. ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

When you get a new worldview you get a new world. It's like the shift from medieval Christianity to the Renaissance and enlightenment. ~ Barbara Marx Hubbard

A true artist could and should create till the day they die. You don't ever fail as an artist until you quit being an artist. ~ Christian Keiber

I always wanted to be a renaissance woman, do as many things as I possibly can and hopefully do them well or don't do them at all. ~ Jill Scott

The only hope is that our civilization will collapse at a certain point, as always happens in history. Then, out of barbarity, a renaissance. ~ Pierre Schaeffer

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything. ~ Victor Hugo

Just as not all butterflies produce a hurricane, not all outbreaks of bubonic plague produce a Renaissance. ~ Eric Weiner

The Renaissance of Europe did not take place in the 15th century. Rather it began when Europe learned from the culture of the Arabs. The cradle of European awakening is not Italy. It is the Muslim Spain. ~ Robert Briffault

While nothing is certain, I firmly believe our nation is on the verge of a nuclear energy renaissance. ~ Michael K. Simpson

Piracy doesn't hurt an artist unless the artist puts out a bad album. ~ Eminem

An artist should be taking risks. That's the whole idea of being an artist. ~ JR

Don't fear the future or regret the past but celebrate the present. ~ Tim Mann Artist

I am the Constellation of my own ~ Artist Emerald

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu , virtue free of moral acid). ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

The term 'renaissance man' is always bandied about. I don't think that applies to me. You think about Leonardo da Vinci, and he was a painter and a physicist and an architect, and that is a true renaissance man. ~ Moby

In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, man's dispute with madness was dramatic debate in which he confronted the secret powers of the world; the experience of madness was clouded by images of the Fall and the Will of God, of the Beast and the Metamorphosis, and of all the marvelous secrets of Knowledge ~ Michel Foucault

I have not written in vain if I have heretofore done anything towards diminishing the reputation of the Renaissance landscape painting. ~ John Ruskin

A little artist has all the tragic unhappiness and the sorrows of a great artist and he is not a great artist. ~ Gertrude Stein

I wouldn't want to be labelled unless it was something much broader and inclusive such as an ecological artist or a visionary artist, but there's a constraint in the definition of a feminist artist, you're an artist and you're a feminist. ~ Carolee Schneemann

There's a perception that if an artist produces another artist, they're going to imprint on them. But I'm the opposite. ~ Beck

I have always been a martial artist by choice, an actor by profession, but above all, am actualising myself to be an artist of life. ~ Bruce Lee

When you are writing for an artist you are trying to get into that artist's point of view. What does that artist want to say? What do they care about? And musically, you want to show off that artist. ~ Frank Wildhorn

But there's more than just solving the how-to problems. I've often said that if we're going to have a real rural renaissance, I'd just take the solving of the how-to problems for granted. The first thing I'd provide would be festivals. ~ Ralph Borsodi

An artist who theorizes about his work is no longer artist but critic. ~ H.G.Wells

It takes an artist ... . to be an artist ~ Sameh Elsayed

Shakespeare is, essentially, the emanation of the Renaissance. The overflow of his fame on the Continent in later years was but the sequel of the flood of the Renaissance in Western Europe. He was the child of that great movement, and marks its height as it penetrated the North with civilization. ~ George Edward Woodberry

The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.
Piet Mondrian
The Artist's Way A Spiritual Path to Greater Creativity by Julia Cameron ~ Piet Mondrian

[T]he more the public is confused, the easier it falls prey to doctrines of pseudo-science which may at some future date recieve the backing of politically powerful groups [ ... ]a renaissance of German quasi-science paralleled the rise of Hitler. ~ Martin Gardner

Artist must have an all-or-nothing attitide. Otherwise they will bite his head off and there will be no artist. ~ Kata Mlek

National liberation, national renaissance, the restoration of nationhood to the people, commonwealth: whatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon. ~ Frantz Fanon

The Renaissance ... was based on a new idea of the importance of the individual. But this was a fragile foundation, because individuals depended on constant applause and admiration to sustain them. There is a shortage of applause in the world, and there is not enough respect to go around. ~ Theodore Zeldin

The Renaissance did not break completely with mediaeval history and values. Sir Philip Sidney is often considered the model of the perfect Renaissance gentleman. He embodied the mediaeval virtues of the knight (the noble warrior), the lover (the man of passion), and the scholar (the man of learning). His death in 1586, after the Battle of Zutphen, sacrificing the last of his water supply to a wounded soldier, made him a hero. His great sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella is one of the key texts of the time, distilling the author's virtues and beliefs into the first of the Renaissance love masterpieces. His other great work, Arcadia, is a prose romance interspersed with many poems and songs. ~ Ronald Carter

A glorious place, a glorious age, I tell you! A very Neon renaissance - And the myths that actually touched you at that time - not Hercules, Orpheus, Ulysses and Aeneas - but Superman, Captain Marvel, and Batman. ~ Tom Wolfe

I believe that a truly valuable artist must be an artist who realizes the impossibility of his task -and then continues to do it. ~ Keith Jarrett

It seems to me that the arts are rather flourishing. There's an awful lot of bad art about because of this, but that's true of every great era. I'm sure there was a lot dreadful art in the Renaissance that we fortunately don't see today. ~ Louis Auchincloss

Right now, scientists are in exactly the same position as Renaissance painters, commissioned to make the portrait the patron wants done, And if they are smart, they'll make sure their work subtly flatters the patron. Not overtly. Subtly. ~ Michael Crichton

An artist is a person who has invented an artist. ~ Harold Rosenberg

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience. ~ David Bowie

Our approach to education has remained largely unchanged since the Renaissance: From middle school through college, most teaching is done by an instructor lecturing to a room full of students, only some of them paying attention. ~ Daphne Koller

You really need to stop Googling yourself and start being an artist. ~ Alan Palomo

I wanted to be acknowledged as an artist, not just some kiddie-book artist. ~ Maurice Sendak

As struggles go, being an artist isn't that much of one. ~ Brian Eno

I never considered myself an artist. I aspire to be an artist, but I never thought I had the depth or substance or gift to be an artist. I do think I have some talent, but it doesn't go as far as being an artist. ~ Woody Allen

It's easy to say "This year in art sucked." After all, about 85 percent of all shows of contemporary art are bad. But 85 percent of all art made in the Renaissance was bad. ~ David Edelstein

It [the Harlem Renaissance] was a time of black individualism, a time marked by a vast array of characters whose uniqueness challenged the traditional inability of white Americans to differentiate between blacks. ~ Clement Alexander Price

"Do not call yourself an "artist-photographer" and make "artist-painters" and "artist-sculptors" laugh; call yourself a photographer and wait for artists to call you brother." ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's a poor artist who borrows
a good artist steals. ~ Pablo Picasso

Being an artist doesn't mean that you're a good artist. That was the bargain I first made with myself: I'd say, I'm an artist, but I'm not really very good. ~ Paul Simon

Leisure was the sine qua non of the full Renaissance. The feudal nobility, having lost its martial function, sought diversion all over Europe in cultivated pastimes: sonneteering, the lute, games and acrostics, travel, gentlemanly studies and sports, hunting and hawking, treated as arts. ~ Mary McCarthy

When an artist stops being a child, he stops being an artist. ~ Isamu Noguchi

I admire most of all The Renaissance Man, and if it can be said without pretentiousness, I like to think of myself as one, at least in some small measure. Not a Michelangelo, mark you, but perhaps a poor man's Cellini or a road company Cosimo de' Medici ... the Renaissance Man did a number of things, many of them well, a few beautifully. He was no damned specialist. ~ Lucius Beebe