Washington Allston Quotes

He that seeks popularity in art closes the door on his own genius: as he must needs paint for other minds, and not for his own.

If you start to just aim for what the audience wants to hear, you're already hamstrung because you don't have any freedom.

In art there are only two types of people: revolutionaries and plagiarists

The only enemy of art is taste.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

We allow no geniuses around our Studio.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Rules and models destroy genius and art.

I always talk about if you want to be an artist, you have to be authentic because people can tell bullshit a mile away. There is nothing wrong with creating a character, standing behind that character, and that being an authentic performance piece, because that's a piece of art as well. But if you want to be an artist in any form, you have to know to come with it.

Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one, and the man of talent sees two or three, plus the ability to register that multiple perception in the material of his art.

Genius is personal, decided by fate, but it expresses itself by means of system. There is no work of art without system.

An artist in my view is always afraid of extremists; he is always afraid of those who claim to have found the ultimate solution to any question.

Let none presume to measure the irregularities of Michael Angelo or Socrates by village scales.

Art that submits to orthodoxy, to even the soundest doctrines, but lacks imagination and deep self-expression is lost leaving only the craftsmanship.

It takes only one man to make an artist, but forty to make an Academician.

Genius is, to be sure, not a matter of arbitrariness, but rather of freedom, just as wit, love, and faith, which once shall become arts and disciplines. We should demand genius from everybody, without, however, expecting it.

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.

I think that just the nature of art education in schools, it's about packs, you know? Like, we're young wolves running together, creating a consensus. And consensus is antithetical to the art process.

The particulars of life do not matter to the artist; they merely provide him with the opportunity to lay bare his genius.

All art is based on non-conformity.

Often times, being in a popular thing means that you have to compromise your own acting.

Art has a will of its own. It has nothing to do with the taste of the moment or what's expected of you. That's a formula for dead art, or fashionable art.

The beauty of ideas is that they are like waves in the ocean and they connect with things that came before them, and I think it is very important to embrace things that interest you and influence you, and incorporate them into what you do, as all artists have always done. The ones that say they don’t, are lying. Or are afraid that their work won’t be seen as being original, somehow.

Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.

An artist discovers his genius the day he dares not to please.