Top 37 Quotes & Sayings by Lawrence Weiner

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

All art is made from anger.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

As nice as some of the booths are, it's not the same thing. It's a pity for young artists, because one of the things that a younger artist can look forward to is an emerging dealer who has a space that they can take over and build whatever will suit whatever aesthetic they find themselves in. In an art fair, you turn yourself into an object.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Art's supposed to build logic structures.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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