Artistic Role Quotes

Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.

Like every Canadian, I have been taught that one of the most important functions of art is to supply and elaborate the myths and narratives of nationhood.

I see myself as a songwriter and a poet.

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable.

The artist's job is not to succumb to despair but to find an antidote for the emptiness of existence.

I'd be very honored to be the ambassador to drum solos.

That's always a cool thing to be the voice of what the eyes are seeing. It gives you the role of the Greek chorus and that's always fun to do.

An artist is made to entertain. That's their primary goal, to entertain you. But some artists record the moments of time. You wouldn't know what was happening in the '20s and '30s; you got to check the song or art.

I don't think of myself as a director or writer. I think of myself as a filmmaker.

I see myself as an interpretative actor rather than a creative one.

Art is not supposed to change the world, to change practical things, but to change perceptions. Art can change the way we see the world. Art can create an analogy.

Putting out commercial pieces and promoting them and trying to sell them to people is not necessarily what it means to be an artist.

That’s what painting does; it organizes vision in a certain way or suggests that certain things be paid attention to and certain other things not be paid attention to. It functions in that way to a certain extent in our civilization.

The function of art is to acquaint the beholder with something he has not known before.

The artists always reflect the times, so there's a lot to think about, a lot of unknowns, a lot of things that are describable. This is the closest I've seen to the kind of ambience that made the '60s happen. It's not about the artist having a responsibility to do anything. They have to be artists and express themselves and everything will work out fine.

Music has given a voice to many generations, and I think we, as artists, can be a part of creating a better world.

My job as an artist, as I see it, is to understand and in some cases to take on various ways of thinking about people and the world that are different from my own, sometimes radically different.

Artists are the gatekeepers of truth. We are civilization’s anchor. We are the compass for humanity’s conscience.

Art isn't supposed to change the world, but it can.

I don't think of myself as an illustrator. I think of myself as a cartoonist. I write the story with pictures - I don't illustrate the story with the pictures.

I'm not a playwright.

All serious art is being destroyed by commerce. Most people don't want art to be disturbing. They want it to be escapist. I don't think art should be escapist. That's a waste of time.

The purpose of art ... is not to reflect life but to organize it, to build it.

David Cronenberg knows what we actors do as artists.

I'm not a policy maker. I'm not even a very great activist. My main thing is to make things that speak for the culture that I live in.