Artistic Detachment Quotes

I have a policy that I don't actually watch the work that I do. There are all kinds of reasons to do that, but one really interesting side effect that has come about from that is that I have no imagery of the show that isn't from first-person.

I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it's no longer his... I just see what people make of it.

When you finish a record, I look at it like a photograph. It's already taken. You got it the way you wanted it to be. You edit it, make sure the light and contrast are right, then you just put it away, and that's your photograph. Then you don't really think about it anymore.

I don't design. I don't paint. I absolutely never touch my works.

If a few people decide not to buy my album it's really not going to change my life that much.

Writing a novel is not method acting and I find it easy to step out of it at cocktail hour.

You put a piece of music out, and it's not in your hands anymore, and that's cool with me.

This is how I feel about everything that's out of your control: once you make a record, it's not yours anymore. There's nothing you can do. It's the way I feel about political movements - both of those things grow on their own.

The personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluid, and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalises itself, so to speak. The aesthetic image in the dramatic form is life purified in and reprojected from the human imagination. The mystery of aesthetic like that of material creation is accomplished. The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

I remain detached and distant, but it is under my eyes and my orders that the work of art must create itself. Then, when the creation starts, I stand there, present at the ceremony, immaculate, calm, relaxed... ready to welcome the work of art that is coming into existence in the tangible world.

Seeing what the film becomes, out of your hands - you never know, you know? I'm always rather anxious. It's not like in theater when you are more in control. You're more - not a puppet, but you don't control it. You don't own it.

For an author nothing is as dead as a book once it is written.

The personal lives of painters are tragic and inevitable and do not explain the artist. For the artist is his work and no longer human.

Balzac, you know, our great Balzac, he wrote interesting things about how in literature you keep distance in order to express great feelings. You have to keep a distance - and it's exactly the same with acting.

The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art. Eliot said that art is the escape from personality, which I think is right. We know that Velázquez embezzled money from the Spanish court and wanted power and so on, but you can't see this in his art.

And why should any man who writes, even if he writes things immortal, nurse anger at the world's neglect? Who asked him to publish? Who promised him a hearing? Who has broken faith with him? Your poem, your novel, who bargained with you for it?

The same applies to any artist; we are the tools and instruments of our talent. We are outsiders; we have no place in society because society is what we’re watching, and dealing with.

I try and take it for what it is, and I'm very at peace with the fact that when I'm done with the songs, they don't belong to me anymore. They belong to the listeners.

I am not a painter, nor an artist. Therefore I can see straight, and that may be my undoing.

The gratification comes, for me, in the doing of it. And once I've done it, I can't do anything about it if it's good or if it's bad.

For the artist to attach himself to his work, or identify himself with it, is suicidal.

My part as an actor ends on the last working day. I think the success or failure only really matters to the producer or whoever it matters to. For me, when I finish the film, I'm done, and if I'm happy, that's that.

When you're a writer, you never know which of your pieces are going to gain a toehold and which will not, and it's best not to care too much.

I have realised that at the end of the day, I have to detach from my films, just do my job, and move on.

The arts community is generally dominated by liberals because if you are concerned mainly with painting or sculpture, you don't have time to study how the world works. And if you have no understanding of economics, strategy, history and politics, then naturally you would be a liberal.