Madonna can still produce a catchy pop song, but she hasn't expanded her artistic vocabulary since the 1990s. Her concerts are glitzy extravaganzas of special effects overkill. She leaves little space in them for emotional depth or unscripted rapport with the audience.
I've had the thought that a person's 'artistic vision' is really just the cumulative combination of whatever particular stances he has sincerely occupied during his creative life - even if some of those might appear contradictory.
I grew up. I began to think the United States had some problems that really required the help of artistic people to solve. And I gave myself permission to be a writer instead of a civil servant.
That is the artistic task: To choose the best from these solutions.
I played a heap of snow in a school play. I was under a sheet, and crawled out when spring came. I often say I'll never reach the same artistic level again.
My whole artistic life has always been about change, change, change, move on, move on. It's the only thing I find interesting.
Being Jewish is a big part of my artistic sensibility and my humor... I think it gives me a certain take on the world on a literary level.
So much of artistic creation is just exclusion. It's not creating things; it's just excluding things that really aren't going to be helpful.
Good architecture should be a projection of life itself, and that implies an intimate knowledge of biological, social, technical, and artistic problems.
Now, when I came on to Washington to begin my job, I was so interested in photography at that time that I really would have preferred to work with Stryker than with my department, which was more artistic if you wish.
There ought to be an artistic depot where the artist need only hand in his artwork in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand - good heavens! - that's what I really call troublesome.
Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
The fictionally correct have all the answers, and that's what's wrong with them. They're artistic technocrats. There's no dilemma so knotty, no question so baffling, that it can't be smoothly neutralized by dialing up the right attitude adjustment. Poor old Hemingway. If only he'd known.
I've always been really artistic. I went to an all-girls' private Catholic school, and one of their biggest things was musical theater. I became obsessed with that.
Artistic temperament is the disease that afflicts amateurs.
By denying its musical and artistic merit, hip hop's critics get to have it both ways: they can deny the legitimate artistic standing of rap while seizing on its pervasive influence as an art form to prove what a terrible effect it has on youth.
The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic than to love others.
I really want to do more mature, artistic, twisted, edgy films. That is my goal.
'Doom' aficionados expand their adventures as far as their imaginations and artistic abilities allow. Once players have exhausted the 'authorized' levels of 'Doom,' they can go on to explore thousands of additional unauthorized levels available in kits and on the Internet.
My job as artistic director at the Brighton digital agency Lighthouse is all about trying to show that digital culture is about more than just tools and gadgets - it's about perceiving the societal transformations being brought about by technology.
Popularity gets up people's noses. But I understand the importance and the function of popular music. There is an artistic purpose. Popular music helps people to develop a curiosity and leads them towards classical music.
Music is very nebulous, and you can conjure up a lot of moods with music. But lyrics - they're a lot more tangible. They're much more specific. And you want to say something meaningful and creative and artistic and that tells a story and that takes people someplace else.
Television is the same as the telephone, and the same as the World Wide Web for that matter. People who become obsessed by the peculiarities of these communications media have simply failed to adjust to the shock of the old. People who bleat on about the 'artistic' potential of television qua television are equally deluded.
It is interesting: in France, the horror films are not so popular. People go to see them, but not for the same reason. It is more artistic and process.
Our parents more or less just kind of wanted us to pursue our passions. Whatever they would have been, they would have helped light the fire. They are very liberal, artistic people, but they didn't force us into acting. They let us find our own ways.
As a writer, I always tend to take the liberty and the great artistic luxury of a composite form of writing.
When I wrote the eight fairy tales that appear in 'Horse, Flower, Bird' I was working toward a completely new form of artistic expression, trying to create a new kind of tale that also felt vintage: innocent and childlike, but haunted. I tried to write a picture-less picture book.
We weren't your mainstream '50s family. Both my parents had wonderful, eccentric, artistic friends who treated us as friends as well. How your mind worked was considered important.
My sisters used to learn dance, and I used to stand behind them and dance. So my guruji suggested that I also learn, as I seemed interested. I started learning at the age of three and was always on stage for something or the other. My mother is proud of me, and clearly my artistic bent comes from her.
I think some of the funniest and most artistic people I know are the ones who had a hard time at school. They often have humility and artistry. So, as much as I feel bad for kids who have to go through a rough childhood, I believe that if they can turn it around, it's going to make them better people later on.
I personally don't distinguish between artistic and commercial films.
If you are living a life that feels right to you, if you're willing to take creative chances or a creative path that feels like it's mostly in keeping with your sensibilities, you know, aesthetic and artistic, then that's what matters.
The Almeida's artistic director, Rupert Goold, brought me Mike Bartlett's 'King Charles III' with the slightly apologetic warning that it was in blank verse, but, of course, that appealed to me.
I remember, when I was young, to have a literary or artistic vocation was really dramatic because you were so isolated from the common world. You felt that you were marginal, and if you dared to try to organise your life around your vocation, you knew you'd be completely segregated.
Every new writing project, every new artistic project, needs to be protected so it can grow on its own before it begins to creep out into the world.
I've written almost 200 songs with Bad Religion. No matter where you look in our history, the focus has been trying to instill some of these disturbing realities about the world, some of the implications of evolution into an artistic format that can be interpreted by people who may never study evolution.
