Sol LeWitt Quotes - Page 2

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

In my case, I used the elements of these simple forms - square, cube, line and color - to produce logical systems. Most of these systems were finite; that is, they were complete using all possible variations. This kept them simple.

Minimal art went nowhere.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

Conceptual art is only good if the idea is good.

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.

[The artist's aim is] not to instruct the viewer, but to give him information... . The artist would follow his predetermined premise to its conclusion, avoiding subjectivity. Chance, taste, or unconsciously remembered forms would play no part in the outcome. The serial artist does not attempt to produce a beautiful or mysterious object but functions merely as a clerk cataloguing the results of his premise.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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