Artistic Authority Quotes

Spike Lee is a master of tone, so basically, if he wants to do something, he should do it, and Imma listen.

The director is the only person who knows what the film is about.

The conductor is the artistic leader and sometimes cultural arbiter of his or her community. It is their leadership that is looked to and should anything go wrong, they are the persons taking most of the heat.

Throughout history, self-styled arbiters have taken it upon themselves to decide the question of what can or cannot be the legitimate purview of art.

When I was in school, they say everybody can do art. And I was, like, a little bit obstinate - not an anarchist, but I was always asking questions. I said, 'Isn't art supposed to be difficult?' If we can all do art, then it's not really art. It's supposed to be difficult.

When a director is also a writer, everyone on the production looks to him, knowing he gave birth to the idea. There's a different level of viability.

I don't believe in competitions between artists. This is insane. Who has the authority to say someone is better?

As an artist, I have to be a leader of my fans, not, like, follow them. Because if I chose to follow them, you know, they could do it. You know, it's me who's doing it.

To be honest, I think, for me, the power is always with art. The art world clearly couldn't happen without art.

If you're trying to do something wholly new, it's hard to fully trust it. But if you use forms that have come before, it lends your music weight and authority. It's also a way to acknowledge that it's not just you who's feeling these things. The emotions are coming through you from a whole history.

As long as artists arbitrarily assume the right to decide what is or is not art, it is logical that the public will just as arbitrarily feel that they have the right to reject it.

There's a kind of power thing about the camera. I mean everyone knows you've got some edge. You're carrying some magic which does something to them. It fixes them in a way.

Basically, I viewed any work of art as an imposition of another person's taste, and saw the individual making this imposition as a kind of dictator.

I feel like an emperor only when I'm writing.

As a producer, I learned not to declare anything about a movie I'm not directing.

I am an important artist. And I make art. Therefore, my opinion matters.

Choreographers tend to treat ballet dancers like kids they can manipulate.

For an artist, a good place to be is you have some kind of influence and power to get things done, but in your essence you remain a nomad or a soldier facing a difficulty to be overcome.

Film directing is really undermined if you attempt to do it by committee because there has to be a single vision as to how to tell a story. It's like if you were at a campfire, and everyone is taking turns to give one sentence in telling a horror story. It would be a mess - it's not going to make sense.

There ought to be an absolute dictatorship... a dictatorship of painters... a dictatorship of one painter... to suppress all those who have betrayed us.

So, then, the best of the historian is subject to the poet; for whatsoever action or faction, whatsoever counsel, policy, or war-stratagem the historian is bound to recite, that may the poet, if he list, with his imitation make his own, beautifying it both for further teaching and more delighting, as it pleaseth him; having all, from Dante’s Heaven to his Hell, under the authority of his pen.

I don't let the fans rule my world and rule what I do, or how I do it, because as artists we give what we give and you receive how you want to receive.

Often, directors toss playwrights out of rehearsals.

Most artists value my opinion a lot, and I think that's due to 'Beast Mode.'

Literature isn't a moral beauty contest. Its power arises from the authority and audacity with which the impersonation is pulled off; the belief it inspires is what counts.