Explore Quotes on Art

In art one idea is as good as another.

The idea becomes a machine that makes the art.

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

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

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.

What the work of art looks like isn't too important. It has to look like something if it has a physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it must begin with an idea. It is the process of conception and realization with which the artist is concerned.

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

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.

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.

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.

Art to me is an anecdote of the spirit.

My art is not abstract, it lives and breathes

To approach the spiritual in art, one will make as little use as possible of reality, because reality is opposed to the spiritual.

We call those works of art concrete that came into being on the basis of their inherent resources and rules - without external borrowing from natural phenomena, without transforming those phenomena, in other words: not by abstraction.

If today's arts love the machine, technology and organization, if they aspire to precision and reject anything vague and dreamy, this implies an instinctive repudiation of chaos and a longing to find the form appropriate to our times.

Of all the arts, abstract painting is the most difficult. It demands that you know how to draw well, that you have a heightened sensitivity for composition and for colors, and that you be a true poet. This last is essential.

Each period of a civilisation creates an art that is specific in it and which we will never see reborn. To try and revive the principles of art of past centuries can lead only to the production of stillborn works.