Lawrence Weiner famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

Skills come with age, but wisdom, I doubt it very, very much.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Skills #Doubt #Age
Once you know about a work of mine you own it. There's no way I can climb inside somebody's head and remove it.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Way #Climbs
Art that imposes conditions - human or otherwise - on the receiver for its appreciation in my eyes constitutes aesthetic fascism.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Appreciation #Art #Eye
People, buying my stuff, can take it wherever they go and can rebuild it if they choose. If they keep it in their heads, that's fine too. They don't have to buy it to have it - they can just have it by knowing it.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Knowing #People #Stuff
The only art I'm interested in is the art I don't understand right away. If you understand it right away it really has no use except as nostalgia.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Art #Understanding #Use
In my eyes, making art is very often about something that you don't know.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Art #Eye #Art Is
All art is made from anger.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Art #Made #Art Is
Accreditation. The "doctorate of fine art." I've never heard something so stupid in my entire life.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Art #Stupid #Fine
I'm keeping everything on a human level, but essentially everything in our lives has to be on a human level. Any specification of something by art history doesn't make any sense. The point is, if you have a loving, adorable, supportive mother anywhere in the world and you tell her all of your dreams, all of your aspirations, and the reward you would like, and she understands you, then it's not worth doing.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Mother #Dream #Art
Art's supposed to build logic structures.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Art #Logic #Structure
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
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
The concept of who your audience is becomes more important than your site. Sometimes you can be commissioned to do a piece in Strasburg, and it works. Sometimes you're commissioned to do a piece somewhere else and it doesn't work, but then it moves to another city, the people embrace it, and becomes part of them. You just misjudged the needs of the people. Art is about giving people material and things to work with to fulfill whatever needs they have.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Art #Moving #Somewhere Else
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
In my work, it's simultaneously realities, instead of parallel. Simultaneous avoids the problem of alternate reality. In parallel reality, there's always a hierarchy, and there doesn't necessarily have to be a hierarchy. When you're in a palace like Blenheim, you're supposed to be in awe - why not be in awe of something different than the stuff they're showing you? It's about finding your own existential place.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Reality #Why Not #Alternate Realities
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
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
You can't have a $2 million painting unless it's on the wall somewhere and somebody saw it.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Wall #Saws #Painting
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
Genitive is a funny word because it means "from," but it also is the gender in European languages for objects: the masculine, feminine, and neuter. So if you have a genitive present, there's room for everybody to fit in. I just did a project in Vienna about rock, paper, scissor; you change the gender and it simply changes the whole thing. Rock is no longer a male. It doesn't function the same way.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Mean #Rocks #Paper
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
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
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
I'm not against art fairs, in fact this last one I even made money, but the concept is really disgusting. If you're that rich to be able to hang out for two or three days, you're certainly rich enough to get on a plane and go to Munich or Düsseldorf or wherever and see somebody's real show instead of this stuff just stacked around.
-- Lawrence Weiner

#Art #Real #Two
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

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