Vik Muniz Quotes

It could be that people want to consume sculpture the way they consume paintings - through photographs... I'm interested in the experience of sculpture in the place where it resides.

Sculptures created from found materials like ice and thorns, driftwood, and even bleached kangaroo bones all presuppose that artistic design will yield to the cycles of time and climate, whether over an hour or a decade.

Works of art often last forever, or nearly so. But exhibitions themselves, especially gallery exhibitions, are like flowers; they bloom and then they die, then exist only as memories, or pressed in magazines and books.

Wolfgang Tillman's stunning large-scale pictures, being shown for the first time, were so offhand I failed to see them as art.

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.

At Roden Crater, I was interested in taking the cultural artifice of art out into the natural surround. I wanted the work to be enfolded in nature in such a way that light from the sun, moon and stars empowered the spaces. I wanted to bring culture to the natural surround as if one was designing a garden.

The artist invites the spectator to take a journey within the realm of the canvas... Without taking the journey, the spectator has really missed the essential experience of the picture.

I collect art on a very modest scale. Most of what I have is photography because I just love it and it makes me happy and it looks good in my home. I also have a pretty big collection of art books mainly, again, on photography. A lot of photography monographs, which is great because with photography, the art itself can be reproduced quite well in book form.

I believe all painting and art should be uplifting for the viewer.

I believe in walking out of a museum before the paintings you've seen begin to run together. How else can you carry anything away with you in your mind's eye?

I believe that when you go into a gallery or a museum, the most powerful pieces are the ones that don't have the words in the corner that distract you from the larger piece.

What I am trying to say is that it is not without any value. The value of copies is that they can direct us towards the original. I was recently at the Louvre Museum and I was filming people who were viewing the Mona Lisa. I noticed the number of ordinary people, astonished, mouths agape, standing still for long stretches looking at the work, and I wondered, "Where does this come from? Are these people all art connoisseurs?" They are like me; through the years, we've seen this work in our schoolbooks or art history books, but when we stand before the original, we hold our breath.

I did like Robert Vavra's book not only for its so very good photographs but for the text as well. He's no ordinary fellow, obviously.

It’s like saying beauty is in the eye of the beholder: what appears to be beautiful today may not be judged beautiful in a few years. A perfect example is the Warhol ‘Marilyn’; in the 1960s it was deemed garish. Art needs to be socialised, and you need a lot of context to understand that, and that doesn’t mean having read a few art history books.

I had to leave some traces. In the beginning, I would give complete instructions to the photographer. In the '70s, people would come to photograph your work and you would just end up with this crazy material that had nothing to do with your work; maybe I'd pick up two or three photographs that were the closest to the idea. This is why when you look at the '70s, you see much less documentation and really bad material. The material will become misleading to what the piece was.

I am one of the heretics who believes that art must be enjoyed first and analyzed later.

If a work of art is placed before me, I believe I can enjoy it; but I do not overlook the fact, that Art is one thing, another thing Amusement; and that people do like amusements, and will run after it.

I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

I believe that all true art is classic, but the dictates of the mind rarely permit of its being recognized as such when it first appears.

I firmly believe in the value of books: it's the way to pass on our work, and it allows us to explore new ways to express our creativity. In this specific case, Mariano Vivanco shot some images of David for this project's purpose.

In our time, we have become too interested in the artist and his or her character and experience as a way of understanding art. In my view, you should be able to read a book or see a film without knowing a single thing about conditions or circumstances or character of the artist, and experience the work to the full without such information. Sometimes I feel - speaking for myself - that people know much too much about me, and I wish people knew less and could just read these books and respond to them purely as words on a page.

I don't believe art is available; it's rare and curious and should be completely isolated; one is more aware of its magic the more it is isolated.

Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences.

Graffiti doesn't exist unless someone got a photo, because it's gone immediately.

If I stop being on good behaviour for a moment, my dark little secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art and simply cannot tell a good artist from a weak one, until the artist has enjoyed the validation of others - a received pronunciation.