Sol LeWitt Quotes

You have kids studying master class visual arts who are pushed to make films that will be successful economically; that's what they focus on. So they work for corporate interest instead of artistic expression.

I am afraid to end up being in need to sell canvases - in other words, to be a society painter.

I'm sort of murdered for selling books. The idea is, if you make money your work can't be literary.

Art should be able to be innovative without compromising itself. That's why I believe artists should have bigger preoccupations than checking the price tags on their work or becoming curators' darlings.

It is not the being paid money in advance that jars the sensitive artist: it is the having to work.

There was a point in time where I was doing movies to be able to afford to live in a certain way.

The trouble with movies as a business is that it's an art, and the trouble with movies as art is that it's a business.

I think it would be a good thing in the creative community if there was less embarrassment of this word 'commercial' because that's how you make a business.

As artists, we'd all love to not be commercial - to not sell out to the full extent that we are able. But you do what you have to do to pay New York rent and continue to do what you feel strongly about.

It's not in the interest of the artist to think of his market.

When you are writing a song for something else, if you are doing something for money, I always think that's bad luck.

Capitalists work hard to produce what consumers want. Artists who work too hard to produce what consumers want are often accused of selling out. Thus, even the languages of capitalism and art conflict: a firm that has 'sold out' has succeeded, but an artist that has 'sold out' has failed.

I think the problem with the art market and the art scene is that it is its own beast. It thrives and breathes and defecates independently of the artist.

At first, I didn't want to do unicorns. The artist in me said no. Then I thought, 'Wait a minute: this is commercial art. Let's do what's going to sell.'

The ugliest spectacle is that of artists selling themselves. Art as a commodity is an ugly idea... The artist as businessman is uglier than the businessman as artist.

The challenge artists face today is whether to be an underground, unheard genius, or to dilute their art for the marketplace.

Look, it's my misery that I have to paint this kind of painting, it's your misery that you have to love it, and the price of the misery is thirteen hundred and fifty dollars.

In order to create art today, you have to compromise your art somewhat and be a businessman.

I am free to make anything I want as long as I think it will sell.

There is no purity with regards to the marketplace and art, I believe.

They can buy talent. You can't buy it for yourself, but you can buy other people's talent to serve your purposes. And once an artist does that, he becomes like a plaything of the rich.

The desire to be loved is really death when it comes to art.

I think the biggest thing that people fear when it comes to art becoming a business is those authentic, pure aspirations of art being compromised.

A lot of artists have been persuaded into doing whatever they can do to gain attention. The media, of course, will position and promote the worst of them to the front page. The sidewalk to crime becomes the marketing campaign. These artists have seen it work and sell millions and millions of records for other artists.

It's a funny line when you're walking - the creativity, the subjectivity versus the objectivity, creativity versus the business, and recognizing that you are in the music business, so there are certain things that you have to acquiesce to on the business side and certain creative decisions that you have to make for the purposes of serving the business side of it.