Jeff Koons Quotes

One does not devote one's life in art to shock an audience.

You cannot create a piece of art merely for money. Doing it as part of commerce so denudes art of wonder that it ceases to be art.

I'm not looking to be an artist to make money. I'm looking to be an artist.

There are two kinds of artists in this world; those that work because the spirit is in them, and they cannot be silent if they would, and those that speak from a conscientious desire to make apparent to others the beauty that has awakened their own admiration.

I consider myself first of all an artist. My work is about my creativity - why I create and not for whom.

As an artist, you have to do what you feel passionate about. It has to be something you can connect with.

True art is characterized by an irresistible urge in the creative artist.

Just doing a project because it's an opportunity won't create meaning. As an artist, I need something to communicate.

I'm not a driven businessman, but a driven artist. I never think about money. Beautiful things make money.

Art is something to be proud of. Art is no compromise.

I've never been in this business to make money. I've always been in it to make good music.

I think the mystery of art lies in this, that artists’ relationship is essentially with their work — not with power, not with profit, not with themselves, not even with their audience.

Art for art's sake, and creation for creation's sake, and love for love's sake

The real artist while he paints does not think of the sale, only of the need to make a beautiful living thing.

Art can be very political but that can't be the purpose of art, it can't be the driving force. It isn't with any of the books that I love, anyway.

One of the things you do when you make a piece of art is you try to make the world you'd rather be in.

My primary thing is to make a painting, not necessarily to make a painting to sell for gazillions of dollars, but just to make a painting.

Not that painting would have been a release. The reason for doing it is the desire to create. I've got to do it! I've seen that, I can still remember it, I've got to paint it.

There is an incredible love in creating art unless somebody is saying, 'Hey, let's just make money,' because it doesn't work when you do it that way. If you are aiming for that, forget it.

All any artist can do is please themselves.

In a lot of the art world, you have to present yourself as you know what you're doing at a young age. Music gave me another outlet. The 'no wave' bands were such an inspiration; it felt so free - once you start doing it, it's hard to stop. But I can't get away from art. It comes back around. I wouldn't be true to myself if I didn't pursue it.

The best reason to make a film is that you feel passionately about it.

That's the motivation of an artist - to seek attention of some kind.

If it is the mark of the artist to love art before everything, to renounce everything for its sake, to think all the sweet human things of life well lost if only he may attain something, do some good, great work - then I was never an artist.

I believe that if your primary motivation in life is to be moral, you don't become an artist.