Top 131 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Barry - Page 2

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

My videos rarely run longer than 20 minutes. They're made for private viewing in your home or specifically either that or for a gallery situation where you sit and look.

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.

You can't make somebody care about what you're doing. Either they get it, either there's that connection - or they don't.

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 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 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.

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

I'm used to being the background. I'm used to having work that only lasts for a little while. I'm used to being - working in the real world, where real things are.

You can never really predict how people are going to react, what they're going to think about, whether they care.

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.

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 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.

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 really use still photography very much anymore except to document my work.

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

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 have a lot of ideas for art. And it is really - I don't really have time to do them all.

I never ever approached a dealer. I have always been approached by dealers or curators or whatever.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I am a very lucky artist in the sense that I have had all my life a lot of opportunities to do what I want to do.

I wanted my style to be very recognizable.

I just try things and whether people like it or if I find it successful or not, I just do it.

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 like contrasting between black and white and color.

I am an artist who works very well under pressure, in fact. I like to have deadlines.

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

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.

People ask me why I use words and the reason, of course, is that words talk to you. I mean, they're something that are generated inside of you and that you can relate to you.

I shoot in black and white, sometimes color, sometimes if it looks good I shoot out the window of the airplanes or whatever, anything that - sometimes I secretly take secret photos, shoot video of people on the plane if it's not too crowded. I don't know, whatever comes up.

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

I was a guest at CalArts. John Baldessari invited me out a few times. I've been there. I've been in Pasadena, taught out at Boulder, University of Colorado. And I've taught in Europe. I've lectured and taught. I've taught at the École des Beaux-Arts in Nigne [sp]. I was there for a couple of weeks, I was there. I've taught all over - in Switzerland, Germany.

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.

I mean, part of the justification for art is art history, the fact that you're part of this tradition. You can't really operate outside of it. So looking for what this work is really about, if I look at Velázquez, if I look at Las Meninas or The Tapestry Weavers [1657] or something and really study it and try to figure out what that painting is really about, then I find relationships between what I'm trying to do and what he was doing.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

When you present works of art, one thing I've learned is that if you're lucky - [Laughs] - there will be those few people who, shall we say, get it? Really become engaged, become moved by it in their own way. You cannot control what other people are going to think about it.