artistic substance Quotes

The artists with lyrical content and who say something seem to outlast the fad rappers - I always noticed that.

Art cannot result from sophisticated, frivolous, or superficial effects.

Oh God, it's such a big world right now for artists. There are as many possibilities as you can have time for, getting your music out there with the internet, and Youtube, Vimeo, Facebook, and everything that you have, there is a way to spread the word. To me, the first thing you have to have is substance and content and real depth.

You cannot set art off in a corner and hope for it to have vitality, reality, and substance.

Too much art was no art at all. Like candy instead of bread!

Keyboardists whose chief asset is mere technique . . . more often than not astound us with their prowess without ever touching our sensibilities. They overwhelm our hearing without satisfying it and stun the mind without moving it.

We were never a frivolous band; we prided ourselves on having something to say, and I think that's what gives your songs longevity.

If you're an artist who's built on marketing and hype then most likely I won't listen to you.

I have drawn people's attention to the fact that art is a mirage. A mirage, just like the oasis that appears in the desert. It is very beautiful, until the moment when you die of thirst, obviously. But we do not die of thirst in the field of art. The mirage has substance.

As my uncle always says, 'If your vibe outweighs your substance, you're destined to be a novelty.' I think that is true in all art.

The writer who develops a beautiful style, but has nothing to say, represents a kind of arrested esthetic development; he is like a pianist who acquires a brilliant technique by playing finger-exercises, but never gives a concert.

Rap - so many words, so little said.

You get a chance like that maybe once in your lifetime, and you are lucky to sustain it over that period of time. It doesn't mean to say that whatever I do in the future has no substance to it - I may present some new material I've got, and there are definitely new angles of doing it - but I'm not looking to recreate another Led Zeppelin.

I'm not the 'rappity-rapper' type dude. All my music is really true. I can't just rap about nothing, just metaphors and putting words together. I can't just smash out material like other guys. I just want my albums to be crazy every time I drop one.

I've always felt that if one was going to take seriously this vocation as an artist, you have to get beyond that decorative facade.

I was a student, and as such you generally rely on prior models of how to make art, but these were not satisfying. Then I discovered in photos what had been missing in paintings; namely that they make a terrific variety of statements and have great substance. That is what I wanted to convey to paintings and apply to it.

In truth, the legitimate contention is, not of one age or school of literary art against another, but of all successive schools alike, against the stupidity which is dead to the substance, and the vulgarity which is dead to form.

I think you only have to pull stunts if the content of your music is meaningless.

There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.

Of no agenor of any religion, or party or profession. The body and substance of his works came out of the unfathomable depths of his own oceanic mind.

I was aware of the possible biases you could get as a commercial director, like being too concerned about the technical aspects of the form rather than anything of substance. If you keep working in commercials, you can get trapped in a very superficial way of thinking. I always used commercials as an exercise for filmmaking, like going to the gym.