Ben Shahn Quotes

I invest because I'm really a firm believer in letting the artist make their work, if you choose to work with an artist then you give them the go-ahead.

Artists can do whatever they want!

I'm not here to put my music out on the Internet with no support and then say I got creative freedom. I've got creative freedom wherever I go: I don't create anything that I don't want to create. That's freedom. Since when does a company force you to make something that you don't want to make? If they do that, you leave.

I'd only do a deal with a label if it allowed me to still be indie and have that indie mentality. I have to have creative control.

I like artists to have some freedom.

Young people have realised that an artist is in charge of what they're doing - this crazy cynicism that artists were puppets has disappeared.

I don't believe in censorship, but I do believe that an artist has to take some moral responsibility for what he or she is putting out there.

It's so easy to get into the same routine. A novel every two years; perhaps, improving technique. But I'm not interested in that. I'm interested in doing something fundamentally important--and therefore, it needs time. And what I've been doing, really, is avoiding this pressure to get into the habit of one novel a year. This is what is expected of novelists. And I have never been really too much concerned with doing what is expected of novelists, or writers, or artists. I want to do what I believe is important.

The artist's duty to himself is a combination of immense responsibility and immense irresponsibility. I think those two interlock.

I'm an artist and you can fantasize about me however you want.

There's something exciting and incredibly liberating for an artist to finish something Friday night and the world hears it Friday night instead of eight months later after marketing people and all those assholes get involved.

You've got major artists releasing albums on their own and eschewing the major system. I think that breeds excitement and creativity.

The thing about being on the majors, from the beginning, going into this, I was like, "I'm not going to be treated like a factory," because that's never the way it was done before. You're talking about a major label, we're talking about serious business; you're not an artist anymore, you're a business, you have to work in terms of product, you have to release a product, and I don't really think that way at all.

Artists are not your art monkeys. They are your collaborators. They should be given all due consideration to follow their journey.

I have very little interest in the bottom line or signing artists to help make the label profit. That's a lucky, unique position to be in, but it all comes out in the wash.

I practice the artist's golden rule. I wouldn't want somebody telling me how to finish my painting, I'm not going to tell him how to finish his movie or how to shape his movie.

Nowadays, if you're a great artist, you don't have to leave the house, which is a really big difference. You're closer to the artist. And the artist can be closer to their artistry without having to always worry about branding themselves or building something image-wise.

There are a lot of doors that still get shut, and there are a lot of walls to still breach. But, the stuff that does come across to me, or that I hear about or read about, that I'm willing to go out there and fight for, I still have to go audition. I do have a certain leeway to choose, from that group, what I want to say, as an artist.

An artist is generally expected to stick to one motif, one persona. People get used to seeing someone put down a certain thing.

I'm trying to give people the chance to put out their music without the bullshit pressures of other labels.

I think it's possible to be free in a big production. It's the eye of the director and the actor and the story.

The big labels have less of a stranglehold on artists and how they record and where they go.

Hopefully this is going to be a trend, the beginning of a movement to reclaim theater for the artist and not commerce. I think there's a level of fatigue. Artists are tired of having to create work that's then coopted by commercial demands. When you begin souping up the car, the car no longer feels like your own.

Paint what you are, paint what you believe, paint what you feel.

I do my best; I put out things I believe in and if you don't like it then pass on to something else.