Robert Wilson Quotes

Science is nothing, but trained and organized common sense.

I'm a pretty analytical guy, all right?

I'm not trying to do conceptual art.

Learning to fly an airplane taught me a way of thinking, an approach to problem-solving that was applicable and effective. Pilots are very methodical and meticulous, and artists tend not to be.

I have been known as the minimal and conceptual artist for over five decades. I think I haven't changed much.

I never use nature as a starting point. I never abstract from nature; I never consciously think of nature when I paint.

I'm very left-brain.

I don't think that my art isn't serious. I think the subjects are not serious, or my treatments of the subjects are not serious. But then, I'm also putting down subject, because like the abstract expressionists, I don't think the subject is important.

My work is not about paint. It's about paint at the service of something else. It is not about gooey, chest-beating, macho '50s abstraction that allows paint to sit up on the surface as subject matter about paint.

We are speaking to the intelligence of Canadians, not to their emotion.

I always approach logic without emotion. The math always equals the math. Regardless of whether I discovered the math before anyone else, or I just decided to accept it, I know what logically makes sense, and I'm going to speak on it every time.

My approach to portraiture is conceptual.

It's not like somewhere along the way I decided to be a total formalist in terms of music and to not care about content; the content is going to be there whether I try to make it be there or not, and I can have fun and see what happens.

Mine was not pop art. I maybe started with a subject, but I changed the subject.

Formal art is essentially rational.

Mathematical Knowledge adds a manly Vigour to the Mind, frees it from Prejudice, Credulity, and Superstition.

Passion has helped us; but can do so no more. It will in future be our enemy. Reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason, must furnish all the materials for our future support and defense.

Go with the science!.

Some people are great at the pure mathematical things - like Bill Gates, he's great at math things. He loves to do puzzles. Me, I like to look at an overall landscape and try to figure out, how do you solve a problem?

The messages that my work might contain, the verbal aspects, the use of words, certainly I never mean for it to be more than - shall we say? - fifty percent of the total, and sometimes my active interest is much less than that. It is the formal aspect of my painting which fascinates me most.

Boat building is intellectual - everything has a reason. In sculpture, it has a direction.

I've never been known as a riff kind of artist.

I'm a formalist. I'm interested in the history of painting.

Sol LeWitt had a huge influence on my work because of his use of repetition and his clarity, setting up a system and letting that system go. That's kind of where the text paintings came from.

I don't make decisions with my heart, I use my brain to think things through.