Robert Barry Quotes

And we live in a kind of realm of language and words and so forth. So we can sort of relate to them. They don't exist without us. We create words.

You can't have silence on the radio; people will turn away from the station.

And when you are operating within your style, which is your world, which you operate in, then it also would make sense to you. Now, whether it makes sense to anybody outside is besides the point really. You just do it and then you find that other people kind of begin to relate to it and allow themselves to get into your way of thinking about things.

I think you say the word in your mind anyway, you know. When you look at a word, you say it.

I'm not a person - and my wife also - we don't really go to the beach or anything like that. We go to cities.

I've always said my biggest influence is my, just, the last work I did, the last piece I made.

I was good at art - always good at art.

The idea of, say, the compressed space between the floor and the object hanging over it and then the long space between the object and the ceiling was a kind of interesting idea for me - the idea of compressing and expanding. That was an idea that I worked with, which you could only do sculpturally. You can't really do with a painting on the wall.

I always had a fairly decent income, coming in just from the art.

I do like certain kinds of frames for work. That's important.

The space between things is important to me. The projections, that darkness between the words or the images is very important.

I'm my own worst critic. I mean, I know what's wrong with everything that I've done.

Reaking up the space and using the space, using the length of the space, the height of it, whatever, the light, all of those things. It's something that you have to kind of slowly recognize in your work and develop over years of making work.

I always took photographs. I photographed a lot of trees, by the way, which is another image I used often in my work, the tree image.

I am good in the fact that most of my reviews have been very positive really. I get pretty good reviews. There have been some that aren't - critical. I think they are extremely - the people that wrote them really don't understand what they are looking at quite frankly or have a very preconceived notion of what conceptual art should be or where I am at or the fact that I may change what I have done from what I did 20 years ago. But there is always some reason that they just sort of get it wrong. And so it certainly doesn't affect my work.

I wanted my style to be very recognizable.

And when you see artists like Donald Judd and so forth being referred to as conceptual, what the hell does that mean? It's a totally meaningless term.

Normally my head is always filled with art ideas and things that I have to do, deadlines that I have to meet.

The idea of words and photos was something that appealed to me.

And yes, there are things I want to keep, that I like around me - especially when there's very little left. I just want to keep those little bits of reminders of my past. There are certain drawings from the '60s; certain little paintings from the '60s that I keep.

I went to Our Lady of Mercy, parochial school and I started Fordham Prep, but that only lasted about a year and then I - to me, it was like going to some kind of concentration camp. I was not very happy. And I only went there because that's where my brother went, really.

I work with deadlines. It is terrible to be an artist where you are just producing work and nobody gives a damn. Nobody wants to show it.

I like the work hanging free in the frame. I don't like too much frame around it but I like a little breathing space around the piece.

You know, there are some people who just don't - that cannot get comfortable behind the wheel of a car and always sort of think they're going to kill somebody.

I like working late at night and then going into the house and sitting down and watching a movie and then going to sleep.

The drawings that I show - the drawings that I present to people are finished works in themselves. They're meant to be thought of that way and not necessarily lead to larger pieces or anything like that. And that's the way I work now.

I was also very interested in music. I used to hang out in jazz joints, you know, the Five Spot and so forth when I was, you know, a senior, really, when I was a little bit older. And I thought, well, maybe I could, you know, work with music. I can't play at all.

And style, by the way, is a very important thing. It is like your signature, your handwriting or it is something that you develop that is your way of presenting yourself and also your way of looking at what art - of how to make art.

I am always producing work, but there is always a sort of deadline where you have to finish work. I don't do it for a show. In other words, I am not like a fashion designer where I have a, you know - I have to put out the full line or I have to put out the summer line like that.

I am very generous with my dealers in terms of the art that they have of mine. They all have a very good selection of work that they can work with. And it is up to them to find the dealers. I don't interfere with their selling.

How does any idea come to your mind? I don't know.

I make my own surprises and I'm always surprised to see what I do, to see it when it's finished and the biggest challenge is once I finish it, it's not a failure. It's not a flop.

Whatever came out came out. That was it. That's what you live with. If you don't like it, that's your problem.

I like a lot of good European films, good - anything really. I'm a big fan of Netflix and I get films from them all the time. If I hear about something that I don't know, that I haven't seen, forgot about, I immediately jot it down and add it to my Netflix list or if there's a film that's available that I haven't seen for many years, I get that.

I really kind of liked the fluidity and not really being tied down. I saw the kind of people that were tenured and what happened to them there and I thought it was kind of death, really.

The first place I try to go when I have free time is the museums. I'm a big museum person.

Heidegger wrote a book called Was Ist Das Ding - What Is a Thing? which was kind of interesting and influential to me, as a matter of fact. It's a small paperback, which I read. It's about the nature of thingness; what is it? It's a very penetrating analysis of that, and I think a rather influential book. I know other artists who have read it and come up with it.

You can't just suddenly change gears and reverse yourself or go to the left or the right because there is no left or right. There's always a certain direction that you're moving in.

I think words speak to us even though they may be written on a wall. So we hear them in our mind. We say it to ourselves. But they are also visual things. You draw them. They are designed. They are colored. They have a certain size. I put them in a certain place. So they are objects that have to be - artistic decisions have to be made in terms of the color and the size and the line and whatever.

I have to say, I'm not someone who's really big into my family history - never really was very curious about it. The only thing I know about it is what I picked up from my aunts and parents.

And after a while, you just pare things down more and more and more, until you get to certain basic things which just - basic ideas which just seem to work for you over and over again.

I liked the idea of the words floating in space and the space behind it moving all the time, ever changing.

The words represent ideas first of all. That is something you have to understand. I mean, it is not just an object, but it is an object with a history and it is loaded with all kinds of implications and ideas. They exist in the world in a very special way. So they kind of represent some aspect of the world that we perceive, as do photographs, as do drawings of trees or whatever. And they are not a one to one. They are not the world, but they kind of refer to the world and they also exist in the world.

I had always worked. I always had part-time jobs.

I prefer music but sometimes if there's on talk radio - someone might be on that I like. I listen to the old - to "Air America," down at the - liberal talk shows and things like that I find kind of nice, their criticizing the conservatives. I find that quite relaxing, entertaining, but music, a lot of music.

I'm always looking for relations between my work and the old masters.

I have never had a shortage of ideas for shows. I always just do them and the gallerists don't - they stopped long ago trying to tell me what I should show in their gallery. They just don't even do it. I show whatever I want to show. They are very happy and as far as I know, they have always been very pleased with whatever I have shown, even if it is nothing to sell.

Ne thing you have to develop as an artist is a confidence in what you're doing and that you're right about it.

I had always taken photos - always, always taken photos, made movies.

I like challenge. I like to be put into a situation which I haven't done before. Something new presents itself and I see if I can somehow finagle it into making a work of art out of it.

But artistically, my art I kept very separate from my political beliefs, deliberately and very, very rarely would I allow that kind of thing into it.

Words are objects of a color and a size and a form and a shape.

I may have a lot of political opinions but it doesn't necessarily come into my work. I keep the two worlds separate.

I'm getting more and more into Chinese art and Japanese, some of those scroll paintings are amazing. You follow the change of the seasons. It's really something. These guys were great masters and of course the use of space.

I never stop thinking about what I have to do. Let's put it that way. The only thing that takes me out of that is probably a film. I watch a lot of movies.

Having a self-published book is akin to having a newborn baby - if you don't give it the loving care and attention it deserves, it will die.

I didn't like anti-Vietnam War art. I didn't like feminist art. I thought it was heavy-handed and stupid - as art.

The big thing is I try not to repeat.

After I did the drawings of trees combining them with words, I started doing - I did that for a very short time. Then it kind of - that sort of evolved into just showing the branches of a tree coming down into the trunk and then going into the root system. So I showed both the branches and the roots of a tree, which were about equal. There is as much going on under the ground as is going on above the ground, which you can see.

I work sometimes with dealers and sometimes people just come to me. A lot of the commissions, they just know me. They have seen something and they just approach me.

I make videos which are works of art in themselves which have nothing to do with Hollywood movies or anything along those lines and I like videos because they deal with light and dark and time and change and they're just another kind of medium that I can get into and work with when I choose to other than, say, doing something on the wall or a window.

Art was something that I was really interested in, probably more so than writing or anything else.

But if I did read, say, [Maurice] Merleau-Ponty, for instance, it always seemed to me that the parts that I understood in what he was talking about - and I read him because - well, he wrote a book, well, the Phenomenology of Perception [New York: Humanities Press, 1962]. And it seemed to me that perception had a lot do with how we take in art.

Even though you're reading something, it's as though that person who wrote it is speaking to you. It's a form of conversation, really.

People who look at art don't really - don't go with the artist. They don't sort of accept what he or she has done and kind of go with it. There are always - either there's too much color or not enough color, either it's not conceptual enough or it's too conceptual. In other words, most criticism isn't what the viewer expected that it would do based on what they think you have done and that's good as far as I'm concerned.

I certainly don't believe that people can read other people's minds.

If somebody gives me a chance to do something, I am going to use that space, that time, that light, that whatever it is and try and work with it.

I was also a good writer, by the way. My, you know, my English teacher and writing teacher loved my writing. You know, I wrote short stories and things like that. And they liked them very much.

The only problems I sometimes have is if I ask for a piece for a group show, if I ask for a piece - I would like to put it into a show, sometimes the collectors get possessive about it and don't want to let something happen. Say you get full credit, you know. You give them your name, the catalog and it always enhances the value of the piece, you know, the more shows it is in, blah, blah, blah.

Words have very potent meanings and people read them and they react to them personally. They are very suggestive in terms of your life and things like that.

I don't have a dream project. I don't really think in those terms, to tell you the truth.

If you want to know about what's good in art, you should talk to an artist.

I'm fortunate in one respect; that I don't have a lot of work in my studio. Most of it's out, gone; either sold or in galleries. I work with a lot of galleries.

I was a filmmaker. I made movies. I made films. And I always took photos and made films, always from the beginning.

I consider drawings finished works of art, first of all. However, the ideas can be something that can be developed into something larger. I don't make so many drawings anymore since I'm working with language. I used to make more when I worked with sculptural things, especially the wire pieces.

If you are operating in a certain way and you are thinking in a certain direction, suddenly opportunities arise. And if you are open to it, if you are not locked into your style too much or to what you think works.

The idea of the culture that you live in determining meaning in your art, though, is a very important aspect of what art would be about. But that had more to do with the kind of general understanding of what the hell you're doing, you know.

I was an adjunct. I never got tenure, never had it. I was a professor, though. But I never got tenure. I never really wanted tenure, to tell you the truth. Really wasn't - the guys who got - the tenured people were some of, like, the least interesting. And they were people I didn't really like very much anyway.

I usually, if I give a talk, I don't usually prepare anything. I just say - you know, I may stop talking by showing some video or slides of what I do but mainly I try to respond to what problems people have with my work.

I loved music. Music was a big thing and so I started collecting records. I had a large collection of jazz records and that was something else I used to listen to. At night, there was a - what the heck was his name? There was a famous - Jazzbo Collins, I used to listen to at night, and some other guys.

Most of the criticism of my work was pretty good, but occasionally it would not be. And I just sort of felt that they absolutely didn't get what I was doing. It was their limitations on what they thought art should be or what they thought my work should be in relation to earlier work or whatever.

So I never had trouble getting work or working or doing - I always worked. I worked when I went to college. I worked after school.

I like contrasting between black and white and color.

I try to create a kind of dynamic thing that hopefully some people will become interested in. And what they do with it after that is sort of up to them. But it's a specific item, it's a specific thing that I've done. And what they do with it is their problem.

I don't really use still photography very much anymore except to document my work.

I am very easy. I like to have my work out. I am not restrictive about any of that. It is the collectors that are possessive, not me, not me.

I made films from the - when I was a little kid, my father bought me a movie camera. I just wanted to. I don't know how. You just learn, you just do it. You just do it.

Teaching I realized took up a lot of my time. I was a kind of a teacher that spent time with students, spoke to them after class, tried to help them out. I'd talk with them personally about their work and try to get out of them what they were thinking about, forcing them to thinking seriously and not just falling back on all the ideas that they had picked up someplace. And so I took my job teaching very seriously and that - as a result, it took up a lot of time.

Developing your own style became something very interesting, very important to me.

I was at one point thinking about being an art historian, when I was in school. And not being an artist, but I decided I was going to be an artist but I'm really mad for art history and the masters mostly.

If I'm reading something and a word pops up, or I just catch it, I try to mark it off and then, later, write it down on a piece of paper and add it to my list.

I shoot a lot of video, first of all, whatever I think is interesting, just my travels; hard to say why. If something looks good, I take a picture or try to shoot it.

A word refers to something in the real world and so, in a way, does a photo. It's not the thing itself, but it's a kind of suggestion of where you might look for that thing.

The notion of a thing, materiality, was something that I think was something very in peoples' minds when they were dealing with earth and metal and different kinds of metals and the interaction of different sorts of material.

By being critical, you also develop your own style of what you like, what direction you want to move.