Minimal art went nowhere.

Formal art is essentially rational.

Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool.

Irrational judgements lead to new experience.

You shouldn't be a prisoner of your own ideas.

The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.

Conceptual art is only good if the idea is good.

What the work of art looks like isn't too important.

Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple

Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.

Minimalism wasn't a real idea - it ended before it started.

The idea part is simple but the visual perception is complex.

I wasn't really that interested in objects. I was interested in ideas.

The narrative of serial art works more like music than like literature.

One should be intelligent enough to know when not to be too intellectual

Artists of many diverse types began using simple forms to their own ends.

Buying books was a way anyone could acquire a work of art for very little.

During the '70s I was interested in words and meaning as a way of making art.

In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work

Artists teach critics what to think. Critics repeat what the artists teach them.

The thinking of John Cage derived from Duchamp and Dada. I was not interested in that.

I was not interested in irony; I wanted to emphasize the primacy of the idea in making art

I was not interested in irony; I wanted to emphasize the primacy of the idea in making art.

Obviously a drawing of a person is not a real person, but a drawing of a line is a real line.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.

Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns out refrigerators.

Conceptual art became the liberating idea that gave the art of the next 40 years its real impetus.

The other great development has been in photography, but that too was influenced by Conceptual art.

A blind man can make art if what is in his mind can be passed to another mind in some tangible form.

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

Every generation renews itself in its own way; there's always a reaction against whatever is standard.

An architect doesn't go off with a shovel and dig his foundation and lay every brick. He's still an artist.

New materials are one of the great afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new ideas.

Your work isn't a high stakes, nail-biting professional challenge. It's a form of play. Lighten up and have fun with it.

One usually understands the art of the past by applying the conventions of the present thus misunderstanding the art of the past.

Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.

All of the significant art of today stems from Conceptual art. This includes the art of installation, political, feminist and socially directed art.

The artist’s aim is not to instruct the viewer, but to give information, whether the viewer understands the information is incidental to the artist.

I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live.

Unless you're involved with thinking about what you're doing, you end up doing the same thing over and over, and that becomes tedious and, in the end, defeating.

A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.

Once it is out of his hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way.

I didn't want to save art - I respected the older artists too much to think art needed saving. But I knew it was finished, even though, at that time, I didn't know what I would do.

You belong in the most secret part of you. Don’t worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you—draw and paint your fear and anxiety.

I became interested in making books, starting about 1965, when I did the Serial Project #1, deciding that I needed a small book to show how the work could be understood and how the system worked.

Just as the development of earth art and installation art stemmed from the idea of taking art out of the galleries, the basis of my involvement with public art is a continuation of wall drawings.

When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.

The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance.

All intervening steps, scribbles, sketches, drawings, failed work models, studies thoughts, conversations, are of interest. Those that show the thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final product

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