Sol LeWitt Quotes

I was meticulously copying other art and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead.

I'm interested in creating new work.

Every single work of art is the fulfillment of a prophecy; for every work of art is the conversion of an idea into an image.

Art is not communicative, art is not reflexive. Art, science, philosophy are neither contemplative, neither reflexive, nor communicative. They are creative, that's all.

How should an artist begin to do his work as an artist? I would insist that he begin his work as an artist by setting out to make a work of art.

There are two avenues from the little passions and the drear calamities of earth; both lead to the heaven and away from hell-Art and Science. But art is more godlike than science; science discovers, art creates.

The business of every art is to bring something into existence, and the practice of an art involves the study of how to bring into existence something which is capable of having such an existence and has its efficient cause in the maker and not in itself.

Every piece of technology, every piece of art, basically everything manmade comes from an idea.

The creative act is a letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas.

It is the object which aroused the artist, stimulated his ideas and set of his emotions. These ideas and emotions will be imprisoned in his work for good.

Art is the path of the creator to his work.

The painting is finished when the idea has disappeared.

The production of a work of art is determined by the material and intellectual climate in which a man lives and dies.

I never know what I'm going to put on the canvas. The canvas paints itself. I'm just the middleman.

For a sculptor, a painter, a weaver, a potter, the dialogue between one's materials and what one makes from them is easy to see: discover a new material or a new way to use a familiar one, and new things can be made, sometimes leading to the discovery of more new material, leading to more creation.

Since the tubes of paint used by the artist are manufactured and ready-made products, we must conclude that all the paintings in the world are 'ready-mades aided' and also works of assemblage.

I think a lot of times our culture has an attitude toward art and the production of art that separates artists from the rest of us, like making art or music or painting or whatever is some magical thing that you have to be inspired to do, and special people do it.

That's the buzz for me, the creative process. An idea is never as good as when it's in your head. And then it's just how little you ruin it.

In sharp contrasts to traditional art, modern art does not hide the fact that it is something made and produced: on the contrary, it underscores the fact.

Art was as much in the activity as in the results. Works of art were not just the finished product, but the thought, the action, the process that created them.

Doing fine, thank you, I would say, never knowing how to talk about what I do. If I could talk about it, I would not have to do it. I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my heart. Some of them. Not all.

All works of art should begin... at the end.

I tend to get very suspicious of anything that thinks it's art while it's being created.

It's easier and sociabler to talk technique than it is to make art.

I don't understand how people live without creating.