“Art for the most part, is about concentration, solitude and determination. It’s really not about other people’s needs and assumptions. I’m not interested in the notion that art serves something. Art is useless, not useful.”
“Art for the most part, is about concentration, solitude and determination. It’s really not about other people’s needs and assumptions. I’m not interested in the notion that art serves something. Art is useless, not useful.”
Richard Serra (b. 1938, San Francisco) Strike: To Roberta and Rudy 1969–71 Hot-rolled steel 8 ft 1 in x 24 ft x 1 ½ in Guggenheim Museum, New York
“People, buying my stuff, can take it wherever they go and can rebuild it if they choose. If they keep it in their heads, that’s fine too. They don’t have to buy it to have it – they can just have it by knowing it.”
Lawrence Weiner PUSH AS IF & LEFT AS IS 2012 language and the materials referred to. Dimensions variable.
“The most interesting characteristic of the cube is that it is relatively uninteresting. Compared to other three-dimensional forms, the cube lacks the expressive force of the sphere, the dynamic quality of the pyramid, or the graceful complexity of the human figure. But it is what it is — a square in three dimensions — and that alone is enough.”
Sol LeWitt Cube Without a Cube Painted wood multiple, contained in the original wooden box. 1996 7 7/8 x 7 7/8 x 7 7/8 in. Sold $17,780
“What I never wanted in art – and why I probably didn’t belong in art – was that I never wanted viewers. I think the basic condition of art is the viewer: The viewer is here, the art is there. So the viewer is in a position of desire and frustration. There were those Do Not Touch signs in a museum that are saying that the art is more expensive than the people. But I wanted users and a habitat. I don’t know if I would have used those words then, but I wanted inhabitants, participants. I wanted an interaction.” — Vito Acconci
In January 1972, Acconci staged one of the decade’s most notorious performance art pieces at the Sonnabend Gallery in SoHo. Gallery visitors entered to find the space empty except for a low wood ramp. Hidden below the ramp, out of sight, Acconci masturbated, basing his fantasies on the movements of the visitors above him. He narrated these fantasies aloud, his voice projected through speakers into the gallery: “you’re on my left … you’re moving away but I’m pushing my body against you, into the corner … you’re bending your head down, over me … I’m pressing my eyes into your hair.” Seedbed was a seminal work that transformed the physical space of the gallery through minimal intervention to create an intimate connection between artist and audience, even as they remained invisible to one another.
Vito Acconci Seedbed 1972 Gelatin silver print 7 7/8 x 11 11/16 in.
“An artist fights to retain the integrity of a work so that it remains a strong, clear vision. Art is and should be the act of an individual willing to say something new, something not quite familiar.”
Maya Lin Vietnam Veterans Memorial, 1982 National Mall, Washington D.C.
Sponsor: Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund Architect of Record: Cooper-Lecky Partnership Landscape Architect: Henry Arnold Photography: Terry Adams, Mark Segal, Victoria Sambunaris, Wendy Watriss
“I am not interested in the kind of expression that you have when you
paint a painting with brush strokes. It’s all right, but it’s already
done and I want to do something new. I didn’t want to get into something
which is played out and narrow. I want to do as I like, invent my own
interests. Of course, that doesn’t mean that people who, like Newman,
still paint are worn out. But I think that’s a particular kind of
experience involving a certain immediacy between you and the canvass,
you and the particular kind of experience of that particular moment. I
think what I’m trying to deal with is something more long range than
that in a way, more obscure perhaps, more involved with things that
happen over a longer time perhaps. At least it’s another area of
experience.”
