Explore Quotes by Sol Lewitt

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

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.

Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of idea the artist is free to even surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition.

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

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

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

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.

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.

When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.

Also, since art is a vehicle for the transmission of ideas through form, the reproduction of the form only reinforces the concept. It is the idea that is being reproduced. Anyone who understands the work of art owns it. We all own the Mona Lisa.

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.

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

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

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

Minimal art went nowhere.

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

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

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

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.

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

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