"As an artist you have to have a certain amount of arrogance"
About this Quote
The line lands because it punctures the romantic myth of the humble artist who simply “observes.” Photographers don’t just witness; they edit reality, then ask the public to accept that edit as meaningful. A “certain amount” is doing a lot of work here. Weston isn’t endorsing ego as lifestyle branding. He’s describing a calibrated self-belief: enough to withstand indifference, rejection, and the brutal fact that most images disappear into the scroll.
Context matters. Weston comes out of an American photographic lineage where authorship and vision are almost moral claims - a family name associated with formal rigor, seriousness of seeing, and a tradition that treats the camera as more than a recording device. In that world, the real threat isn’t arrogance but timidity: the tendency to dilute your eye to meet taste, to second-guess your instincts into blandness.
Subtext: permission. Not to be obnoxious, but to take up space. The arrogance is the backbone that lets an artist make a choice, stand by it, and keep making work when nobody’s clapping yet.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Weston, Kim. (2026, January 15). As an artist you have to have a certain amount of arrogance. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-an-artist-you-have-to-have-a-certain-amount-of-4121/
Chicago Style
Weston, Kim. "As an artist you have to have a certain amount of arrogance." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-an-artist-you-have-to-have-a-certain-amount-of-4121/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"As an artist you have to have a certain amount of arrogance." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/as-an-artist-you-have-to-have-a-certain-amount-of-4121/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.









