Stephan James Quotes

I've loved art for more than 30 years.

Generationally, I relate to Basquiat's culture and the essence of his life story.

I really love fan art, which I get sent a lot of. I really, really get a lot of. I get a kick out of it.

Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves that they have a better idea.

Basquiat will continue to show us new things about who we are and why he was so important.

In 1983, I was working at an art gallery in Los Angeles and going to film school at Los Angeles City College. At that time, Jean-Michel Basquiat was a young painter and was visiting L.A. for his first show at the Larry Gagosian Gallery.

I love the art world, I love art galleries, I love what it means - I love art.

I have long been a fan and enthusiast where art is concerned.

I have a bunch of fan art. I love it.

Modern art is childish - not childlike, remember, childish; not innocent but stupid, insane, pathological. We have to get rid of this trend. We have to create a new kind of art, a new kind of creativity. We have to bring to the world again what Gurdjieff calls objective art.

I wish I could paint that picture. As a 20-year-old kid, that was a big thrill.

In every writer there is a certain amount of the scavenger.

Artists are modest. They know they're not doing the work; they're just taking dictation.

I do not know who sings my songs / Before they are sung by me.

I feel like a slave, and in a way like an artist, because I need to get inspiration everyday, from everything and everyone.

This grandiose tragedy that we call modern art.

Enthusiasm is that secret and harmonious spirit which hovers over the production of genius, throwing the reader of a book, or the spectator of a statue, into the very ideal presence whence these works have really originated. A great work always leaves us in a state of musing.

While most people in the arts think they have to be constantly looking forward to be edgy and creative....the real secret of creativity is to go back and remember.

Picasso painted with passion, Mozart composed with it. A child plays with it all day long. You may think you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true.

I can't understand how anyone is able to paint without optimism.

I don't think there's anything really wrong with influence because I think that one can use another man's art as material either literally or just implying that they're doing that, without it representing a lack of a point of view.

One painter ought never to imitate the manner of any other; because in that case he cannot be called the child of nature, but the grandchild. It is always best to have recourse to nature, which is replete with such abundance of objects, than to the productions of other masters, who learnt everything from her.

You know if I see a work that really I am very affected by and inspired by then it makes me want to try things with my work that maybe I hadn't considered trying before and I think that is the biggest complement that you can pay somebody.

It comes down to trying to expose yourself to the best things humans have done. And then try to bring those things in to what you're doing.

I always see these landscapes in my dreams, and feel happy. I desperately try to transform these dreams into artwork, so that even while napping, I construct and reconstruct various images.