Anyone who’s put their neck out there to pursue their creative passion knows it can be an unclear, apparently risky path to go down. I mean if you pursue art as a career, how do you get from obscurity and struggle to stability and success? How do you mix art and commerce and maintain your integrity? How do you make it as an artist? Furthermore, how do you make it as an artist in New York Fucking City (Cha Ching!)?

Unfortunately, I don’t yet have the answers to all those questions; however, this book Letters To A Young Artist does have some pretty solid, inspiring advice from some artists who’ve made it to the promised land. I’d recommend getting yourself a copy here if you’re a creative person on the come up. Or just read the quotes that I’ve blatantly hijacked right outta the book (Yeah I know that’s probably a no-no according to the plagiary police, but I just had to share. If anyone is mad about it, please write all complaints on the back of a $100 bill and fed-ex it to my studio).

Elizabeth Murray

Being an artist is one of the coolest things in the world- potentially and actually. Having bright visions of what you might do and become – like the sublime mountain of your career – are critical and motion making. You become what you visualize, and your art becomes what you visualize it to be. -John McCracken

It is your job to re-invent art itself, through what you create. This is not the job of critics, theorists, and curators. They follow. We lead, shape, and bend the path of history. You don’t have to shape up to someone else’s definition of “the artist.” make it up, make up the whole thing…”You worry about showing too early. I disagree. Because you will change, become a new person, many many times over through the years. You will re-invent yourself out of your circumstances and your will. If you show later, you’re someone else. Showing can keep a kind of integrity to who you are at the moment. -Mierle Laderman Ukeles

Elizabeth Murray

Showing your work – eventually selling your work – is not evil, and it is a natural process. You are not selling your soul, you are earning a living, and you don’t have to do anything you feel is wrong. If you make some money and get attention for what you have done, your friends may be envious. Forgive them — you’ll have those feelings too. Only human. -Elizabeth Murray

Elizabeth Murray

Elizabeth Murray

Kerry James Marshall

You should have grandiose ideas about your future success. No one with small ambitions and vague goals ever amounted to much in this game.

When I left school, I felt, as you seem to, at the mercy of mysterious authorities I did not know, and forces beyond my control. I had done some exercises, and made a few things, but never felt I learned anything. A hope and a prayer was all I really had to go on. There was nothing to look forward to, nothing to work toward. I was told, “There’s nothing you can do. Shut up and do your work… they’ll let you know if you make the grade.” That arrangement is unreliable, and totally unacceptable. Never surrender your dream to chance, alone. -Kerry James Marshall

Kerry James Marshall

You are barely one year out of art school, so what you might be experiencing are symptoms of withdrawal, not unlike those associated with mind-altering drugs. You’ve been on a bad trip, and it’s going to take a little while to connect with reality. There are some things you can do, a few techniques that have worked for me, to minimize the confusion and trauma. -Kerry James Marshall

Kerry James Marshall

Art schools are sort of like Crack dens. While inside the environment feels cozy, everything there seems remarkable because you’re all smoking from the same pipe. In the heady, hazy fog of dialogue and critique, the smallest achievements are amplified. You begin to believe that things you make or do have value simply because you made or did them. Your friends are all supportive, they like your stuff. “It is all very interesting, a nice piece.” Be wary of this incessant chatter. In the sober world, the world outside, nobody really cares. Here, you have to win attention, and the span allotted for recognition and celebrity is short and narrow, indeed. Nevertheless, you did inhale lots of bullshit, and now it’s time to blow it out and rehabilitate. -Kerry James Marshall

John Baldessari

My advice? Don’t go into art for fame or fortune. Do it because you cannot not not do it. Being an artist is a combination of talent and obsession. Live in New York, LA, Koln, or London. As for money: If you’re talented and obsessed, you’ll find a solution. -John Baldessari

John Baldessari

Stephen Shore

Having ambition is not a problem. In fact, ambition is necessary to be able to carve out the time needed to produce your work from the multitude of other demands on you life. the question is how that ambition is directed. If you adhere to your personal path, having shows and sales will not do any harm. In fact, you might actually make enough money to live, even live well. There’s nothing at all wrong with that. The problem comes when the market begins to influence your motives and decisions. If your work needs to evolve and change, it may mean abandoning an approach that brought you recognition. -Stephen Shore

John Lennon & Yoko Ono

The world is your oyster: It will provide you with unlimited material for your art. Look at it again from that point of view. Suddenly the world is a different place, so interesting, so beautiful, and so mysterious. Have fun with it. And share your fun with us.

It may just be two people your work will communicate to. Don’t be upset. Be upset if you are not happy with your work. Never be upset about how many people have seen it, or how many reviews it has received. Your work will exist and keep influencing the world. Moreover, your work will keep changing the very configuration of our world no matter what kind of attention it gets or doesn’t get. So even when you are an unknown artist, be caring of what you make and what you give out. your work, no matter what, affects the world, and in return, it brings back 10 times what you’ve given out… If you give out something beautiful, you will get back 10 times more beauty in your life.

Relax and be yourself. Don’t try to be anything but yourself. Rely on your instinct and inspiration. -Yoko Ono

Guerrilla Girls

We’re guessing you’re a woman, since the majority of art students have been female for decades. Get ready to work harder and for fewer rewards than the guy next to you. If you’re an artist of color, multiply those difficulties.

Sure, the art world’s better now than ever before, especially at the entry level where everyone wants to see what women and artists of color have to say. But galleries still overwhelmingly show white males, and up the ladder, at the level of museums, auctions, and art history books, there’s a crushing glass ceiling, way worse than in a lot of other fields. -Guerrilla Girls

Cai Guo-Qiang

Whether you are working in a restaurant, washing dishes, painting portraits on the street for money, or showing in some gallery in order to make a living is not so important. These are means to make a living. As long as you have a goal and find a path to reach this goal artistically while maintaining your creative power, and do not lose confidence along the way – these are the real points. -Cai Guo-Qiang

So my advice, for whatever it’s worth, is not to worry too much about those uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts. If making art is hard work -and it is- equally hard is the process of being and artist, of bringing the work to a public. This is where human relations are so important. A lot of the stuff I learned about art and being an artist did not come from visual artists; it came from writers like Keats (in his letters) and composers like Ned Rorem (in his diaries) and outdoorsmen like Ray Bergman (who wrote about fly fishing for trout). So read as much as you can and get into the thick of life whenever you can – learn a foreign language, learn things about other people, go places and do things that have nothing to do with art- because it’s the stuff that has nothing to do with art that has everything to do with art. -Joseph Grigely

Tags: Art, Books, Letters From A Young Artist, Quotes