110+ Robert Barry Quotes On Education, Lessons And Minimal

Robert Barry is an American artist known for his conceptual art and installation works. His works often explore the relationship between language and perception, as well as the role of the viewer in the creative process. He is associated with the Minimalist and Post-Minimalist movements, and is considered one of the most influential figures in the development of Conceptual Art. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Robert Barry on leadership, education, life.

Top 10 Robert Barry Quotes

1. I know where the mistakes are. Nothing is perfect and I understand that.
2. I try not to manipulate reality... What will happen, will happen. Let things be themselves.
3. I like the work hanging free in the frame. I don't like too much frame around it but I like a little breathing space around the piece.
4. I like working late at night and then going into the house and sitting down and watching a movie and then going to sleep.
5. I had always worked. I always had part-time jobs.
6. I always thought there was a - even in the most, quote, "conceptual art," there is always a physical aspect to it. I never knew what the term meant.
7. I have to say, I'm not someone who's really big into my family history - never really was very curious about it. The only thing I know about it is what I picked up from my aunts and parents.
8. If you want to know about what's good in art, you should talk to an artist.
9. Everybody is always satisfied with what I do.
10. How does any idea come to your mind? I don't know.

Robert Barry Short Quotes

• I'm always looking for relations between my work and the old masters.
• I was always - I was a movie nut. I lived in the movies, really.
• Developing your own style became something very interesting, very important to me.
• Agnes Martin is a big influence in my work actually, when I first saw her, these fine grids.
• I've always said my biggest influence is my, just, the last work I did, the last piece I made.
• Art was something that I was really interested in, probably more so than writing or anything else.
• I'm my own worst critic. I mean, I know what's wrong with everything that I've done.
• The first place I try to go when I have free time is the museums. I'm a big museum person.
• I don't really use still photography very much anymore except to document my work.
• I don't have a dream project. I don't really think in those terms, to tell you the truth.

Robert Barry Famous Quotes And Sayings

And style, by the way, is a very important thing. It is like your signature, your handwriting or it is something that you develop that is your way of presenting yourself and also your way of looking at what art - of how to make art. — Robert Barry

And we live in a kind of realm of language and words and so forth. So we can sort of relate to them. They don't exist without us. We create words. — Robert Barry

I think I feel much more at home in studio. — Robert Barry

I'm used to being the background. I'm used to having work that only lasts for a little while. I'm used to being - working in the real world, where real things are. — Robert Barry

I didn't know my grandparents. They were - my grandfather - my maternal grandfather died when I was five. I have very little memory of him. All my other grandparents were dead by the time I was of any age to remember anything. — Robert Barry

The Vogels were quite strict in what they acquired. They never acquired a projection. They never acquired a sound piece. They were never big on photos that much, unless it was photos documenting something. They had some limitations into what they bought. — Robert Barry

I really wasn't about to get a Ph.D. in art history, you know, which you'd absolutely needed. And that was not something I wanted. And I loved art history, but not that way. — Robert Barry

I went to Our Lady of Mercy, parochial school and I started Fordham Prep, but that only lasted about a year and then I - to me, it was like going to some kind of concentration camp. I was not very happy. And I only went there because that's where my brother went, really. — Robert Barry

So I never had trouble getting work or working or doing - I always worked. I worked when I went to college. I worked after school. — Robert Barry

I was also a good writer, by the way. My, you know, my English teacher and writing teacher loved my writing. You know, I wrote short stories and things like that. And they liked them very much. — Robert Barry

I always had a fairly decent income, coming in just from the art. — Robert Barry

I am very generous with my dealers in terms of the art that they have of mine. They all have a very good selection of work that they can work with. And it is up to them to find the dealers. I don't interfere with their selling. — Robert Barry

Normally my head is always filled with art ideas and things that I have to do, deadlines that I have to meet. — Robert Barry

ne thing you have to develop as an artist is a confidence in what you're doing and that you're right about it. — Robert Barry

I am an artist who works very well under pressure, in fact. I like to have deadlines. — Robert Barry

I didn't make videos for a long time because I hated the look of TV sets. — Robert Barry

I try to create a kind of dynamic thing that hopefully some people will become interested in. And what they do with it after that is sort of up to them. But it's a specific item, it's a specific thing that I've done. And what they do with it is their problem. — Robert Barry

I wanted my style to be very recognizable. — Robert Barry

Words are objects of a color and a size and a form and a shape. — Robert Barry

I may have a lot of political opinions but it doesn't necessarily come into my work. I keep the two worlds separate. — Robert Barry

And after a while, you just pare things down more and more and more, until you get to certain basic things which just - basic ideas which just seem to work for you over and over again. — Robert Barry

If somebody gives me a chance to do something, I am going to use that space, that time, that light, that whatever it is and try and work with it. — Robert Barry

You can never really predict how people are going to react, what they're going to think about, whether they care. — Robert Barry

A word refers to something in the real world and so, in a way, does a photo. It's not the thing itself, but it's a kind of suggestion of where you might look for that thing. — Robert Barry

I think my parents - my parents were very hands-off, quite liberal in terms of their - they really - they did encourage me, but they never really pushed me into anything, really. — Robert Barry

I relied mainly on other artists, who I think are smarter than critics, any critics or curators or anybody like that. They really know. — Robert Barry

I work sometimes with dealers and sometimes people just come to me. A lot of the commissions, they just know me. They have seen something and they just approach me. — Robert Barry

The space between things is important to me. The projections, that darkness between the words or the images is very important. — Robert Barry

If I'm reading something and a word pops up, or I just catch it, I try to mark it off and then, later, write it down on a piece of paper and add it to my list. — Robert Barry

I think words speak to us even though they may be written on a wall. So we hear them in our mind. We say it to ourselves. But they are also visual things. You draw them. They are designed. They are colored. They have a certain size. I put them in a certain place. So they are objects that have to be - artistic decisions have to be made in terms of the color and the size and the line and whatever. — Robert Barry

I like contrasting between black and white and color. — Robert Barry

I like challenge. I like to be put into a situation which I haven't done before. Something new presents itself and I see if I can somehow finagle it into making a work of art out of it. — Robert Barry

You know, there are some people who just don't - that cannot get comfortable behind the wheel of a car and always sort of think they're going to kill somebody. — Robert Barry

I do make some drawings for wall pieces. I do work out some ideas for large-scale wall pieces where I have to organize words or get proportions right. I do keep them in my files. Not an exhibit or a show; just as part of my records, my archives. — Robert Barry

After I did the drawings of trees combining them with words, I started doing - I did that for a very short time. Then it kind of - that sort of evolved into just showing the branches of a tree coming down into the trunk and then going into the root system. So I showed both the branches and the roots of a tree, which were about equal. There is as much going on under the ground as is going on above the ground, which you can see. — Robert Barry

I just try things and whether people like it or if I find it successful or not, I just do it. — Robert Barry

The drawings that I show - the drawings that I present to people are finished works in themselves. They're meant to be thought of that way and not necessarily lead to larger pieces or anything like that. And that's the way I work now. — Robert Barry

I like a lot of good European films, good - anything really. I'm a big fan of Netflix and I get films from them all the time. If I hear about something that I don't know, that I haven't seen, forgot about, I immediately jot it down and add it to my Netflix list or if there's a film that's available that I haven't seen for many years, I get that. — Robert Barry

So it sort of dawned on me that you have to build into your work the fact that it's going to be shown in different kinds of places and different kinds of light. And the fact that the surroundings and where you're going to be shown is always changing, so that should really not affect the meaning of the work. It should be part of what the work is about. — Robert Barry

I was at one point thinking about being an art historian, when I was in school. And not being an artist, but I decided I was going to be an artist but I'm really mad for art history and the masters mostly. — Robert Barry

My videos rarely run longer than 20 minutes. They're made for private viewing in your home or specifically either that or for a gallery situation where you sit and look. — Robert Barry

I loved music. Music was a big thing and so I started collecting records. I had a large collection of jazz records and that was something else I used to listen to. At night, there was a - what the heck was his name? There was a famous - Jazzbo Collins, I used to listen to at night, and some other guys. — Robert Barry

I took art courses, only in the sense that I was able to - I took art classes, which were fun, which I liked, but it was a - just a kind of a general education that I got, a regular academic - academic diploma, but I kind of had the feeling that art was something that I really liked the most but I wasn't really sure that that was it. — Robert Barry

I had always spoken about the space between the art object and the person looking at it as this dynamic space, which I referred to over and over. So the idea of the space between two things was sort of interesting to me. — Robert Barry

I have a lot of ideas for art. And it is really - I don't really have time to do them all. — Robert Barry

I do like certain kinds of frames for work. That's important. — Robert Barry

You can't just suddenly change gears and reverse yourself or go to the left or the right because there is no left or right. There's always a certain direction that you're moving in. — Robert Barry

Words have very potent meanings and people read them and they react to them personally. They are very suggestive in terms of your life and things like that. — Robert Barry

I had always taken photos - always, always taken photos, made movies. — Robert Barry

I made films from the - when I was a little kid, my father bought me a movie camera. I just wanted to. I don't know how. You just learn, you just do it. You just do it. — Robert Barry

I never stop thinking about what I have to do. Let's put it that way. The only thing that takes me out of that is probably a film. I watch a lot of movies. — Robert Barry

I prefer music but sometimes if there's on talk radio - someone might be on that I like. I listen to the old - to "Air America," down at the - liberal talk shows and things like that I find kind of nice, their criticizing the conservatives. I find that quite relaxing, entertaining, but music, a lot of music. — Robert Barry

I mean, part of the justification for art is art history, the fact that you're part of this tradition. You can't really operate outside of it. So looking for what this work is really about, if I look at Velázquez, if I look at Las Meninas or The Tapestry Weavers [1657] or something and really study it and try to figure out what that painting is really about, then I find relationships between what I'm trying to do and what he was doing. — Robert Barry

Most of the criticism of my work was pretty good, but occasionally it would not be. And I just sort of felt that they absolutely didn't get what I was doing. It was their limitations on what they thought art should be or what they thought my work should be in relation to earlier work or whatever. — Robert Barry

The idea of words and photos was something that appealed to me. — Robert Barry

I liked the idea of the words floating in space and the space behind it moving all the time, ever changing. — Robert Barry

reaking up the space and using the space, using the length of the space, the height of it, whatever, the light, all of those things. It's something that you have to kind of slowly recognize in your work and develop over years of making work. — Robert Barry

I was good at art - always good at art. — Robert Barry

I was a filmmaker. I made movies. I made films. And I always took photos and made films, always from the beginning. — Robert Barry

And when you are operating within your style, which is your world, which you operate in, then it also would make sense to you. Now, whether it makes sense to anybody outside is besides the point really. You just do it and then you find that other people kind of begin to relate to it and allow themselves to get into your way of thinking about things. — Robert Barry

I'm not a person - and my wife also - we don't really go to the beach or anything like that. We go to cities. — Robert Barry

You can't have silence on the radio; people will turn away from the station. — Robert Barry

You can't make somebody care about what you're doing. Either they get it, either there's that connection - or they don't. — Robert Barry

I shoot in black and white, sometimes color, sometimes if it looks good I shoot out the window of the airplanes or whatever, anything that - sometimes I secretly take secret photos, shoot video of people on the plane if it's not too crowded. I don't know, whatever comes up. — Robert Barry

Even though you're reading something, it's as though that person who wrote it is speaking to you. It's a form of conversation, really. — Robert Barry

I was also very interested in music. I used to hang out in jazz joints, you know, the Five Spot and so forth when I was, you know, a senior, really, when I was a little bit older. And I thought, well, maybe I could, you know, work with music. I can't play at all. — Robert Barry

I didn't like anti-Vietnam War art. I didn't like feminist art. I thought it was heavy-handed and stupid - as art. — Robert Barry

I have never had a shortage of ideas for shows. I always just do them and the gallerists don't - they stopped long ago trying to tell me what I should show in their gallery. They just don't even do it. I show whatever I want to show. They are very happy and as far as I know, they have always been very pleased with whatever I have shown, even if it is nothing to sell. — Robert Barry

People who look at art don't really - don't go with the artist. They don't sort of accept what he or she has done and kind of go with it. There are always - either there's too much color or not enough color, either it's not conceptual enough or it's too conceptual. In other words, most criticism isn't what the viewer expected that it would do based on what they think you have done and that's good as far as I'm concerned. — Robert Barry

I am a very lucky artist in the sense that I have had all my life a lot of opportunities to do what I want to do. — Robert Barry

The idea of, say, the compressed space between the floor and the object hanging over it and then the long space between the object and the ceiling was a kind of interesting idea for me - the idea of compressing and expanding. That was an idea that I worked with, which you could only do sculpturally. You can't really do with a painting on the wall. — Robert Barry

Any artwork is part of something larger, grander and, you know, the situation that it's in is very important. — Robert Barry

I was an adjunct. I never got tenure, never had it. I was a professor, though. But I never got tenure. I never really wanted tenure, to tell you the truth. Really wasn't - the guys who got - the tenured people were some of, like, the least interesting. And they were people I didn't really like very much anyway. — Robert Barry

I usually, if I give a talk, I don't usually prepare anything. I just say - you know, I may stop talking by showing some video or slides of what I do but mainly I try to respond to what problems people have with my work. — Robert Barry

By being critical, you also develop your own style of what you like, what direction you want to move. — Robert Barry

People ask me why I use words and the reason, of course, is that words talk to you. I mean, they're something that are generated inside of you and that you can relate to you. — Robert Barry

I make videos which are works of art in themselves which have nothing to do with Hollywood movies or anything along those lines and I like videos because they deal with light and dark and time and change and they're just another kind of medium that I can get into and work with when I choose to other than, say, doing something on the wall or a window. — Robert Barry

I think you say the word in your mind anyway, you know. When you look at a word, you say it. — Robert Barry

I'm fortunate in one respect; that I don't have a lot of work in my studio. Most of it's out, gone; either sold or in galleries. I work with a lot of galleries. — Robert Barry

If you are operating in a certain way and you are thinking in a certain direction, suddenly opportunities arise. And if you are open to it, if you are not locked into your style too much or to what you think works. — Robert Barry

I really kind of liked the fluidity and not really being tied down. I saw the kind of people that were tenured and what happened to them there and I thought it was kind of death, really. — Robert Barry

I certainly don't believe that people can read other people's minds. — Robert Barry

When you present works of art, one thing I've learned is that if you're lucky - [Laughs] - there will be those few people who, shall we say, get it? Really become engaged, become moved by it in their own way. You cannot control what other people are going to think about it. — Robert Barry

The idea of the culture that you live in determining meaning in your art, though, is a very important aspect of what art would be about. But that had more to do with the kind of general understanding of what the hell you're doing, you know. — Robert Barry

The notion of a thing, materiality, was something that I think was something very in peoples' minds when they were dealing with earth and metal and different kinds of metals and the interaction of different sorts of material. — Robert Barry

But artistically, my art I kept very separate from my political beliefs, deliberately and very, very rarely would I allow that kind of thing into it. — Robert Barry

I never ever approached a dealer. I have always been approached by dealers or curators or whatever. — Robert Barry

I always took photographs. I photographed a lot of trees, by the way, which is another image I used often in my work, the tree image. — Robert Barry

I work with deadlines. It is terrible to be an artist where you are just producing work and nobody gives a damn. Nobody wants to show it. — Robert Barry

I'm getting more and more into Chinese art and Japanese, some of those scroll paintings are amazing. You follow the change of the seasons. It's really something. These guys were great masters and of course the use of space. — Robert Barry

Life Lessons by Robert Barry

1. Robert Barry's work emphasizes the importance of exploring the relationship between art and the viewer, emphasizing the role of the viewer in the creation of meaning in art.
2. His works often challenge traditional notions of what art is and can be, encouraging viewers to think outside the box and consider the possibilities of art beyond what is traditionally accepted.
3. Through his works, Robert Barry encourages us to question our preconceived notions of art and to explore the potential of art to create new and meaningful experiences.