Latest Lawrence Weiner Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• Trying to make certain things on the Internet totally private unless you subscribe. It's not going to work. If you can figure out how to close something down, somebody can figure out how to open it up. That's art.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Trying, Internet

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• Like the people that in the 60s or 70s claimed the "end of painting" - all they did was open up a whole new branch for painting. Happily, it doesn't work. It's not a reason for art. Closing something out is not a reason for something to exist.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, People, Branches

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• I think it's a waste of time to worry about the motives of why people are supportive of things. I think we should look at the thing itself. And if they're supportive of something that's sexist or racist, then it's a bad thing, but it's not because they're supportive of it that it's a bad thing.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Thinking, People, Worry

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• I would imagine, a very large percentage of people who get something for art and they do something else, and they have some excess resources. And they trade those resources with artists whose work makes them feel good, or feel better, or question. And the artist, if they're smart, they use it to buy the most expensive thing in the world: time to make more. The more that come, the better it is for these people, their children, the people they care about, fills the society with a real constant thing.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Children, Real

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• There are people who speculate at objects. I don't think that makes them evil or not evil. It doesn't matter; in order to speculate, it has to be made public. Once it's made public, it's functioned is art.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Thinking, Order

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• Artists try to ask questions, and within our society, unless there are artists, those questions don't get asked. And everybody blames the market.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Artist, Trying, Our Society

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• You can't have a $2 million painting unless it's on the wall somewhere and somebody saw it.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Wall, Saws, Painting

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• I think there should be a reworking of the value structure of art. The value is when the artist makes a first engagement with society. That work has the most value. That is the function of the artist. That result.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Thinking, Engagement

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• Quantum physics - the idea that there is more than one reality going on at the same time in the same place. We live in a concentric society, and we'll have to make our decisions, cake as pie, as pending resolve. It's really and truly - I don't know if "as" will count any longer.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Reality, Pie, Cake

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• There is a primacy of each individual object. And we'll see! That's the whole point of making sculpture, to present a question in a physical form to people.

  Lawrence Weiner

  People, Sculpture, Individual

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• In my eyes, making art is very often about something that you don't know.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Eye, Art Is

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• What art is not processed? "Conceptual art." Somebody making a painting has to conceive of the size. I don't understand where these words came from. I can't accept the fact that the concept of art as our concept of humanity is expanding.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Humanity, Facts

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• We were brought up in a world which was based on Aristotle. Science-wise and everything, that's really quite exciting and you learn a lot. There was one problem: there were parallel realities. And in a parallel reality, there's always one reality that's the prime and the second is always a secondary. And everything's a reflection of something else.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Wise, Reflection, Reality

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• I only work in relation to what the work is about. Yes, of course, if the world's coming to an end I would basically try to get out of the way when the sky falls.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Fall, Sky, Trying

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• I stopped painting, not because I didn't like painting; the sensuality of it was fun. But I wasn't able to get to the point I wanted to.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Fun, Able, Painting

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• Art history is fine. I mean, that's a discipline. Art history is art history, and you start from the beginning and you end up in artist in time. But art is a little bit different. Art is a conversation. And if there's no conversation, what the hell is it about?

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Mean, Discipline

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• There is a discrepancy of somebody going to an art dealer and promising what they'll make for the next three years. And I'm old fashioned that way; I think that every exhibition you make is supposed to put you in the world, that the next exhibition is spinning off of that. It's almost like a riff. And if you know what you're going to do for the next three years, why don't just do it the final point? You would think, in a progressive situation, that the final would be the best.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Thinking, Years

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• Accreditation. The "doctorate of fine art." I've never heard something so stupid in my entire life.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Stupid, Fine

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• The art schools seem to be trying to turn people out as "professional." But I don't know what the word "professional" means any longer. "Professional" would be somebody who was trying to push painting to a point that nobody else could do as well as he could. That would be my ideal professional.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Mean, School

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• Now "professional" seems to be whoever you went to school with. It constitutes your nuclear world. And that's the fault of the teachers; it's not the fault of the young artist.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Teacher, School, Artist

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• Art's supposed to build logic structures.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Logic, Structure

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• What interested me the most was that when I [traveled to Europe] I knew what Joseph Beuys was doing, he knew what I was doing, and we both, we just started to talk. How did I know what Daniel Buren was doing, and to an extent, he knew exactly what I was doing? How did everybody know? It's an interesting thing. I'm still fascinated by it because, why is it now, with the Internet and everything else, you get whole groups of artists who have chosen to be regional? They really are only with the people they went to school with.

  Lawrence Weiner

  School, Artist, Europe

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• In the digital world we live in, there is no pixel who thinks they're better than any other pixel. And there is no pixel that will not work with another pixel to produce something. And when two pixels come together and have children, they'll place any attention to what the color is and nobody says anything.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Children, Thinking, Color

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• There's a radical change in the relationship with the human being and society. Art now is an open conversation with the society. Previously there was a necessity for a little bit of screaming and shouting just to get it into the conversation.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Littles, Radical Change

  Source: frontrow.dmagazine.com

• Think about it: you've already related it down to something that somebody else can understand. If art relates to something - it's like Picasso, it's like Mondrian - it's not. Art's supposed to be what it is. Using a reference of art history might help for some kind of sales, but it doesn't really help anybody. Art is what it is; it cannot be footnoted, until it enters the world. Then it has a history. Then the footnotes are the history, not the explanation.

  Lawrence Weiner

  Art, Thinking, World

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com