Why they stopped calling themselves "artists"

My teacher told me: “We don’t make pretty things, we make art!”
The word ‘Art’ has given me the feeling of a knot in the belly because it is something I do not understand. Showing other people your work for the first
Eline Dragesund
Art is not what my soul longs for
At 18 years old I studied philosophy in the capital, and studied painting in my spare time. By chance I came across Odd Nerdrum’s work. Until then I had no
Arthur Siebra
The notion of being an artist was completely foreign to me
The summer before I started middle school, it was a practice of teachers to make home visits to meet incoming students.  During the meeting, the teacher asked me what I
David Stallings
The topic of kitsch was never brought up in class
I remember the day I was in my painting class at undergraduate school in the late 1990s.  My professor gave all his students photocopies of four pages in ArtNews magazine.  The photocopied
Robert Dale Williams
“A real artist never copies!”
At the University I attended, the professor told the class that everyone shall paint a girl from life. She was a beautiful young student that was our model for the
Sebastian Salvo
I knew I was not an artist, but I didn’t know what I was
I have, as any other human, always imitated. Ever since I was a newborn child copying the facial expressions of my mother, to when I discovered the great cartoonist Don
William Heimdal
You can’t change people who don’t want to change
I Am Not An Artist. As a child I remember looking through my father’s books on Leonardo Da Vinci and Michelangelo with complete amazement. How was it possible that paint
Andrew Aviste
Why I do not call myself an ‘Artist’
When I introduce myself to someone, the conversation always follows the same pattern. I tell them that I am a painter, and specifically on canvases, since they usually invite me
Caique Polizeli
I am a Kitsch Painter, Not an Artist
After spending over three years and many thousands of dollars to attend an art college in the United States, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to study with Norwegian
Jesse Nickell
Kitsch has clear, objective dogmas
In my adolescence I was taught about great Artists from Leonardo and Rembrandt – to modernists with conceptual art and installations. It is quite obvious, even to a child, that
Nichollis Thurman
Why I and many others have stopped using the word “Art”
My father is a painter of stories. Twenty years ago, he stopped calling his work “art”, replacing it with “kitsch”. I was just a few years old and could barely
Bork S. Nerdrum

Life without Kitsch becomes unbearable.

— Friedensreich Hundertwasser, artist