Sculptors

"Since 1990 I have been occupied creating new forms of life. Not pollen or seeds but plastic yellow tubes are used as the basic material of this new nature. I make skeletons that are able to walk on the wind, so they don’t have to eat. Over time, these skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storm and water and eventually I want to put those animals out in herds on the beaches so they will live their own lives."

"I am really interested in the different ways that language functions... When language begins to break down a little bit, it becomes exciting and communicates in nearly the simplest way that it can function: you are forced to be aware of the sounds and the poetic parts of words. If you deal only with what is known, you’ll have redundancy; on the other hand, if you deal only with the unknown, you cannot communicate at all. There is always some combination of the two, and it is how they touch each other that makes communication interesting."

"I don't work that way. Part of it has to do with an idea of beauty. Sunsets, flowers, landscapes: these kinds of things don't move me to do anything. I just want to leave them alone. My work comes out of being frustrated about the human condition. And about how people refuse to understand other people. And about how people can be cruel to each other. It’s not that I think I can change that, but it’s such a frustrating part of human history"

"What really moves you and not just faked emotion. I don't think it's good when it's like that in art – but unfortunately it often is. That's why I like Bruce Nauman, for example, as a sculptor. With his work, sometimes I have really thought to myself, that's simply beautiful.. .Above all, it is difficult enough to depict something that moves you deep down inside. But that's ultimately what art is all about, and that's also what appeals to people – if an artist can do it."

"FOR MANY YEARS, Bruce Nauman has occupied an unusual position in the art world. Known as a vastly influential pioneer of everything from performance to video to conceptualism to installation, with nearly half a century of international biennials and museum exhibitions behind him, Nauman is the rare artist who seems entirely uninterested in pandering to the demands of his own celebrity—and he's been able to get away with it. In 1979, he moved to New Mexico, and he now spends most of his time on a 700-acre ranch south of Santa Fe, emerging from his cluttered studio only to train, breed and ride horses (and presumably to spend a little time with his wife of 25 years, the painter Susan Rothenberg). Communication with the outside world is conducted via his studio manager and gatekeeper of 29 years, Juliet Myers. And inquiries are often fruitless, as Nauman is known for almost always saying no to retrospectives, interviews or anything else that might "totalize," as he's said to put it, his work and career."

"In 1968 Ian Wilson made his final sculpture. Since then, he has explored the idea of oral communication as an art form... Wilson’s work is very hard to track down, even in terms of documentation. He has been compared to the Socratic philosophers but if there is a similarity between his practice and theirs, it probably lies mainly in the fact that everything we have from that period of philosophy takes the form of secondary fragments embedded in other texts. Wilson’s work functions almost like archaeological or geological evidence: it consists of objects that we examine in order to deduce, from scanty clues, what must have happened."

"I think your subconscious knows far more than your conscious, so I trust it. I just make it first and then it becomes much clearer to me why."

"My work has threads of ideas from all over the place. I try to crystallise them in something simple and direct that the viewer can then take where they want."

"I like to take man-made objects and push them to the point where they almost lose their reference, so that they become something else, take on other alliances."

"Jacques Lipchitz and Marc Chagall were among the European artists who settled in New York City during the war. Just before and after he arrived in 1941, Lipchitz gave his works such titles as Flight (1940), The Exile's Path (1941), The Rape of Europa (1941), and Theseus and the Minotaur (1942)."

"The period during the First World War was a very exciting time in Paris, with artists, philosophers, and poets continually discussing and arguing about the work with which they were involved. Although I myself am little concerned with abstract theory, I certainly do think of cubism as a form of emancipation essentially different from artistic movements that had preceded it. Thus, impressionism, while it was a revolutionary technique, was still an essentially naturalistic movement concerned with a precise examination of the nature of light and the effect of changing lights on representational scenes and objects. Cubism did add a new dimension to painting and sculpture, a dimension that changed our way of looking at nature and the work of art."

"I remember one day when Juan Gris told me about a bunch of grapes he had seen in a painting by Picasso. The next day these grapes appeared in a painting by Gris, this time in a bowl; and the day after, the bowl appeared in a painting by Picasso."

"By the early 1920s I knew that I needed to move beyond the simple cubist vocabulary I had learned and to find a new content, a new personal expression.Abstraction was never enough for me."

"Imagination is a very precise thing, you know — it is not fantasy. Remember, the other day I gave you the example of what I mean, what the difference between fantasy and imagination is. I gave you the example of the man who invented the of the man who invented the wheel while he was observing another man walking."

"For me sculpture is divinity. This is the only answer that I could find for myself. Art is man's distinctly human way of fighting death. Through art, man achieves immortality and in this immortality we find God."

"Cubism is not a formula, it is not a school. Cubism is a philosophy, a point of view in the universe. It is like standing at a certain point on a mountain and looking around. If you go higher, things will look different; if you go lower, again they will look different. It is a point of view."

"I am the most curious of all to see what will be the next thing that I will do."

"All my life as an artist I have asked myself: What pushes me continually to make sculpture? I have found the answer — at least the answer for myself. Art is an action against death. It is denial of death."

"I also found so-called great art too pompous, too stiff. What at this time was called minor art was freer, more imaginative, more open to all kinds of unorthodox expression, all kinds of daring in the handling of materials, and I preferred to surround myself with this type of art than with the great collectors' pieces."

"Copy nature and you infringe on the work of our Lord. Interpret nature and you are an artist."

"The basic story line (in my new work) is about art leaving the realm of the artist, when the artist loses control of the work. It’s defined basically by two ends. One would be Louis XIV — that if you put art in the hands of an aristocracy or monarch, art will become reflective of ego and decorative — and on the other end of the scale would be Bob Hope — that if you give art to the masses, art will become reflective of mass ego and also decorative."

"Art to me is a humanitarian act, and I believe that there is a responsibility that art should somehow be able to affect mankind, to make the word a better place (this is not a cliche!)."

"I’m basically the idea person. I’m not physically involved in the production. I don’t have the neces-sary abilities, so I go to the top people, whether I’m working with my foundry — Tallix — or in physics. I’m always trying to maintain the integrity of the work."

"Abstraction and luxury are the guard dogs of the upper class. The upper class wants people to have ambition and gumption because, if you do, you will participate and you'll move through society into a different class structure."

"I try to be a truthful artist and I try to show a level of courage. I enjoy that. I’m a messenger."

"The media, the galleries, the collectors – it's all very chaotic actually. The artworld doesn't have this defined corporate structure that people imagine. Of course there's a system of sorts. This person will talk to that person and somebody else will pass it on to somebody else... you can trace a line of power of some kind. But its nothing like as clear and set as people think. And this chaos leads to a lot of insecurity. It's only after an artist has achieved some independence from it that he MODERN PAINTERS can really stand up to the collectors and the dealers and do his art."

"My work will use everything that it can to communicate. It will use any trick; it'll do anything — absolutely anything — to communicate and to win the viewer over. Even the most unsophisticated people are not threatened by it; they aren't threatened that this is something they have no understanding of. They can look at it and they can participate with it. And also somebody who has been very highly educated in art and deals with more esoteric areas can also view it and find that the work is open as far as being something that wants to add more to our culture. The work wants to meet the needs of' the people. It tries to bring down all the barriers that block people From their culture. that shield and hide them. It tells them to embrace the moment instead of always feeling that they're being indulged by things that they do not participate in. It tells them to believe in something and to eject their will. The idea of St. John and baptism right now is that there are greater things to come. And it's about embracing guilt and shame and moving forward instead of letting this negative society always thwart us — always a more negative society, always more negative."

"I'm trying to go through moral crisis myself to the highest degree that I can, to remove moral crisis from the visual vocabulary of the viewer, so that when somebody sees my work, the only thing that they see is the Sacred Heart of Jesus"

"Our human frame, our gutted mansion, our enveloping sack of beef and ash is yet a glory. The human figure is the image of all men and of one man. It contains all and it can express all."

".. the only true originality any art can have is originality of content. If I tried to find a new way of doing sculpture, I’d be like any other guy."

"Pop art is the inedible raised to the unspeakable."

"There's a tremendous tendency not to make a statement, not to be committed in that ultimate sense. Photo-realism is the same thing as minimal abstraction. Both are unwilling to say anything about the nature of reality, about their own involvement with reality, the evolvement of forms, their expressive...their deepest involvement with human reality."

"I’ve always enjoyed feeling a connection to the avant-garde, such as Dada and surrealism and pop art. The only thing the artist can do is be honest with themselves and make the art they want to make. That’s what I’ve always done."

"Building art is a synthesis of life in materialised form. We should try to bring in under the same hat not a splintered way of thinking, but all in harmony together."

"The immaterial blue colour shown at Iris Clert's in April had in short made me inhuman, had excluded me from the world of tangible reality; I was an extreme element of society who lived in space and who had no means of coming back to earth. Jean Tinguely saw me in space and signaled to me in speed to show me the last machine to take to return to the ephemerality of material life."

"During my nightmarish time in a coma, 11 days long, you kept appearing in my dreams, wild, you and Slava, like gypsies & always too late. You were a two-man orchestra & we were always looking for you and waiting for you."

"My ghosts are satisfied."

"On one level, the machines that he created are devised to instill fear in the spectator; on another level, his machines sought to fill the spectator with astonishment or admiration. As the machines grew larger, filling up the space of the exhibition room, their movements became increasing complex. In 1966, artists pursued the creating of architectural environments for experiments in optical and kinetic technology."

"Let us contradict ourselves because we change. Let us be good and evil, true and false, beautiful and loathsome. We are all of these anyway. Let us admit it by accepting movement. Let us be static! Be static!"

"There is no death! Death only exists for those who cannot accept evolution. Everything changes. Death is a transition from movement to movement. Death is static. Death is movement. Death is static. Death is movement."

"Be yourself by growing above yourself. Don’t stand in your own way. Let us change with, and not against, movement. Then we shall be static and shall not decompose. Then there will be neither good nor evil, neither beauty nor unsightliness, neither truth nor falsehood. Conceptions are fixations. If we stand still, we block our own path, and we are confronted with our own controversies."

"We are still very much annoyed by out-of-date notions of time. Please, would you throw away your watches! At least toss aside the minutes and hours. Obviously we all realize that we are not everlasting. Our fear of death has inspired the creation of beautiful works of art. And this was a fine thing, too. However, our only eternal possession will be change."

"[Tinguely is a] Meta-Dadaist.. ..[who had] fulfilled certain ideas of ours, notably the idea of motion."

"Currently, my machines are black and sometimes gentle, if not sexy or exuding a contained violence; I finally found the technical means for accomplishing this."

"francais: Actuellement mes machines sont noires et parfois même douces, si pas sexy ou alors d'une violence contenue, techniquement j'arrive enfin à les faire bien."

"Immobile, certain, and permanent things, ideas, works and beliefs change, transform, and disintegrate...Movement is the only static, final, permanent, and certain thing. Static means transformation...Do not hold on to anything...Do not pinpoint anything!.. .We are fooling ourselves if we close our eyes and refuse to recognize the change.. .Decomposition begins only when we try to prevent it.. .We would so much like to own, think, or be something static, eternal, and permanent. However, our only eternal possession will be change.. .To attempt to hold fast an instant is doubtful.. .How beautiful it is to be transitory. How lovely it is not to have to live forever."

"We are afraid of movement because it stands for decomposition – because we see our desintegration in movement. Continuous static movement marches on ! It cannot be stopped. We are fooling ourselves if we close our eyes and refuse to recognize the change. Actually, decomposition does not exist! Decomposition does not exist ! Decomposition is a state envisaged only by us because we do not want it to exist, and because we dread it."

"Jean Tinguely's art is built around the idea of the wheel. The wheel's circular movement is in its continuity an eternal repetition. But it is also an eternal renewal.. .In practical machines the goal is to reduce irregularities as much as possible. Tinguely seeks the opposite. He seeks mechanical disorder. The cogs in his wheels are made as to constantly produce inconsistent chance ridden movement. His connections lack al1 precision except that of chance, his wheels have kept their character as symbols for an eternal transformation. They are chance in function. They are a new and original formulation of Marcel Duchamp's idea to use chance intentionally.. .These new creatures of the art world live in an enviable freedom. They stand outside al1 laws and are not bound by systems. This art exemplifies pure anarchy when it is most beautiful. It is an art which is thoroughly revolutionary, thoroughly dynamic, freer than we could ourselves ever hope to become.. .It is a piece of pure existence, forever changing, that doesn't need to mean or hint at something just as a flower or a rat doesn't have to mean.. But one is mistaken to believe that their artistic message is innocent or harmless. It is, actually, loaded with a freedom like a bomb with trotyl. It is a small latent attack against all established order, it is a symbol for an enormous freedom and should scare all righteous thinkers if they could understand its power. It is a symbol for an absolute, dizzying and unbelievable freedom. It personifies a freedom which otherwise would not exist, and therein lies its value. These machines are more anti-machines than machines.. .Military technology and scientific knowledge is constantly a direct threat against Our individual existence.. .Already with Dada we saw a clear skepticism against the technological world. Duchamp's ready-made, the artwork chosen from mass reproduction, contains much irony against machines, and gets its potency not until it is paradoxically freed from its function. As I see it, [Tinguely's work] it represents one of the most conscious expressions for a new type of modem art.. .This art is an anti-social expression. One has to attack machines in their own territory [my italics].. .The weapon of Tinguely's machines is irony."

"Only in movement do we find the true essence of things. Today we can no longer believe in permanent laws, defined religions, durable architecture or eternal kingdoms. Immutability does not exist. All is movement. All is static."

"So-called immobile objects exist only in movement. Immobile, certain, and permanent things, ideas, works and beliefs change, transform, and disintegrate. Immobile objects are snapshots of a movement whose existence we refuse to accept, because we ourselves are only an instant in the great movement. Movement is the only static, final, permanent, and certain thing. Static means transformation. Let us be static together with movement. Move statically! Be static! Be movement! Believe in movement's static quality. Believe in change. Do not hold onto anything. Change! Do not pinpoint anything! Everything about us is movement. Everything around us is change. Believe in movement's static quality. Be static."