Robert Barry Quotes

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

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

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

I'm my own worst critic. I mean, I know what's wrong with everything that I've done.

Agnes Martin is a big influence in my work actually, when I first saw her, these fine grids.

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.

I wanted my style to be very recognizable.

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

I was good at art - always good at art.

I try not to manipulate reality ... What will happen, will happen. Let things be themselves.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

I don't have a dream project. I don't really think in those terms, to tell you the truth.

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

I was always - I was a movie nut. I lived in the movies, really.

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

I know where the mistakes are. Nothing is perfect and I understand that.

I was never that big a rock-and-roll, rock guy. I really preferred jazz, you know, that kind of thing.

Art was something that I was really interested in, probably more so than writing or anything else.

Developing your own style became something very interesting, very important to me.

I like working late at night and then going into the house and sitting down and watching a movie and then going to sleep.

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.

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.

Everybody is always satisfied with what I do.

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

How does any idea come to your mind? I don't know.

I have been in competitions for commissions. I've won most and lost some. Mostly, I've won.

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.

I had always taken photos - always, always taken photos, made movies.

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

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.

I think I feel much more at home in studio.

I had always worked. I always had part-time jobs.

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

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

If you want to know about what's good in art, you should talk to an artist.

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

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

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

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

Whatever came out came out. That was it. That's what you live with. If you don't like it, that's your problem.

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.

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.

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

The first place I try to go when I have free time is the museums. I'm a big museum person.

I'm always looking for relations between my work and the old masters.

I like contrasting between black and white and color.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

I don't really use still photography very much anymore except to document my work.

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

Words are objects of a color and a size and a form and a shape.

The big thing is I try not to repeat.

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

And the mind actually does generate electrical currents - very weak ones and not necessarily ones that can be picked up by anyone else.

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

I've always said my biggest influence is my, just, the last work I did, the last piece I made.