Top 100 Robert Barry Quotes
#1. 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
#2. I make my own surprises and I'm always surprised to see what I do, to see it when it's finished and the biggest challenge is once I finish it, it's not a failure. It's not a flop.
Robert Barry
#3. I have been in competitions for commissions. I've won most and lost some. Mostly, I've won.
Robert Barry
#4. I was always - I was a movie nut. I lived in the movies, really.
Robert Barry
#5. I have a lot of ideas for art. And it is really - I don't really have time to do them all.
Robert Barry
#7. 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
#8. Developing your own style became something very interesting, very important to me.
Robert Barry
#9. 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
#10. You can't have silence on the radio; people will turn away from the station.
Robert Barry
#11. I just try things and whether people like it or if I find it successful or not, I just do it.
Robert Barry
#12. I'm my own worst critic. I mean, I know what's wrong with everything that I've done.
Robert Barry
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. 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
#16. I was never that big a rock-and-roll, rock guy. I really preferred jazz, you know, that kind of thing.
Robert Barry
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. 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
#20. Any artwork is part of something larger, grander and, you know, the situation that it's in is very important.
Robert Barry
#21. 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
#22. 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
#23. I didn't make videos for a long time because I hated the look of TV sets.
Robert Barry
#24. Agnes Martin is a big influence in my work actually, when I first saw her, these fine grids.
Robert Barry
#25. I was a filmmaker. I made movies. I made films. And I always took photos and made films, always from the beginning.
Robert Barry
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. 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.
Robert Barry
#31. I like working late at night and then going into the house and sitting down and watching a movie and then going to sleep.
Robert Barry
#32. 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
#33. I am always producing work, but there is always a sort of deadline where you have to finish work. I don't do it for a show. In other words, I am not like a fashion designer where I have a, you know - I have to put out the full line or I have to put out the summer line like that.
Robert Barry
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. By being critical, you also develop your own style of what you like, what direction you want to move.
Robert Barry
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. I wanted my style to be very recognizable.
Robert Barry
#40. 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
#41. I shoot a lot of video, first of all, whatever I think is interesting, just my travels; hard to say why. If something looks good, I take a picture or try to shoot it.
Robert Barry
#42. 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
#43. 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
#44. I am an artist who works very well under pressure, in fact. I like to have deadlines.
Robert Barry
#45. I don't have a dream project. I don't really think in those terms, to tell you the truth.
Robert Barry
#46. Whatever came out came out. That was it. That's what you live with. If you don't like it, that's your problem.
Robert Barry
#47. The first place I try to go when I have free time is the museums. I'm a big museum person.
Robert Barry
#48. Everybody is always satisfied with what I do.
Robert Barry
#49. Words are objects of a color and a size and a form and a shape.
Robert Barry
#50. I had always worked. I always had part-time jobs.
Robert Barry
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. I always had a fairly decent income, coming in just from the art.
Robert Barry
#55. 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
#56. You can never really predict how people are going to react, what they're going to think about, whether they care.
Robert Barry
#57. I know where the mistakes are. Nothing is perfect and I understand that.
Robert Barry
#58. 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.
Robert Barry
#59. 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
#60. Normally my head is always filled with art ideas and things that I have to do, deadlines that I have to meet.
Robert Barry
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. I like contrasting between black and white and color.
Robert Barry
#64. 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
#65. And yes, there are things I want to keep, that I like around me - especially when there's very little left. I just want to keep those little bits of reminders of my past. There are certain drawings from the '60s; certain little paintings from the '60s that I keep.
Robert Barry
#66. 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
#67. If you want to know about what's good in art, you should talk to an artist.
Robert Barry
#68. I'm always looking for relations between my work and the old masters.
Robert Barry
#69. 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
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. I do like certain kinds of frames for work. That's important.
Robert Barry
#73. 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
#74. 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
#75. 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
#76. 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
#77. I think you say the word in your mind anyway, you know. When you look at a word, you say it.
Robert Barry
#78. 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
#79. 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
#80. I never ever approached a dealer. I have always been approached by dealers or curators or whatever.
Robert Barry
#81. I don't really use still photography very much anymore except to document my work.
Robert Barry
#82. 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
#83. 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
#84. I liked the idea of the words floating in space and the space behind it moving all the time, ever changing.
Robert Barry
#85. And when you see artists like Donald Judd and so forth being referred to as conceptual, what the hell does that mean? It's a totally meaningless term.
Robert Barry
#86. The space between things is important to me. The projections, that darkness between the words or the images is very important.
Robert Barry
#87. I think I feel much more at home in studio.
Robert Barry
#88. 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
#89. I certainly don't believe that people can read other people's minds.
Robert Barry
#90. I try not to manipulate reality ... What will happen, will happen. Let things be themselves.
Robert Barry
#91. 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
#92. How does any idea come to your mind? I don't know.
Robert Barry
#93. Art was something that I was really interested in, probably more so than writing or anything else.
Robert Barry
#94. And the mind actually does generate electrical currents - very weak ones and not necessarily ones that can be picked up by anyone else.
Robert Barry
#95. 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
#96. 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
#97. 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
#98. The idea of words and photos was something that appealed to me.
Robert Barry
#99. I am very easy. I like to have my work out. I am not restrictive about any of that. It is the collectors that are possessive, not me, not me.
Robert Barry
#100. 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.
Robert Barry
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