Sol LeWitt Quotes

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.

Formal art is essentially rational.

Irrational judgements lead to new experience.

One should be intelligent enough to know when not to be too intellectual

[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.

What the work of art looks like isn't too important.

You belong in the most secret part of you. Don't worry about cool, make your own uncool. Make your own, your own world. If you fear, make it work for you - draw and paint your fear and anxiety.

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

When artists make art, they shouldn't question whether it is permissible to do one thing or another.

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

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

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.

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.

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

The most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting. Compared to any other three-dimensional form, the cube lacks any aggressive force, implies no motion, and is least emotive. Therefore, it is the best form to use as a basic unit for any more elaborate function, the grammatical device from which the work may proceed.

I became interested in making books, starting about 1965, when I did the Serial Project #1, deciding that I needed a small book to show how the work could be understood and how the system worked.

Minimal art went nowhere.

You shouldn't be a prisoner of your own ideas.

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.

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

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

The thinking of John Cage derived from Duchamp and Dada. I was not interested in that.

Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.

Obviously a drawing of a person is not a real person, but a drawing of a line is a real line.

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.

One usually understands the art of the past by applying the conventions of the present thus misunderstanding the art of the past.

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.

Once it is out of his hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work. Different people will understand the same thing in a different way.

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

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

Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.

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

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

Your work isn't a high stakes, nail-biting professional challenge. It's a form of play. Lighten up and have fun with it.

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.