Sol LeWitt Quotes

Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.

Art is not in some far-off place. A work of art is the expression of a man's whole personality, sensibility and ability.

The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem. It is the currency of human exchanges, which enables the sharing of states of the soul and conscience, and the discovery of new fields of experience.

Imagination without skill gives us contemporary art.

To sense the invisible and to be able to create it, that is art.

I sometimes set myself thinking and imagining that I find amongst men but one single art or science, and that is drawing or painting, all others being members proceeding therefrom.

My foregrounds are imaginary, my backgrounds real.

What is art if not a concentrated and impassioned effort to make something with the little we have, the little we see?

All men are creative but few are artists.

Take a step, breathe in the world, give it out again in story, poem, song, art.

We have our brush and colors - paint Paradise and in we go.

Art arises when the secret vision of the artist and the manifestation of nature agree to find new shapes.

Carved with figures strange and sweet, All made out of the carver's brain.

Bement was a very good teacher but he was a very poor painter. I guess he wasn't a painter at all. He had no courage and I believe that to create one's own world in any of the arts takes courage.

That afternoon he told me that the difference between human beings and animals was that human beings were able to dream while awake. He said the purpose of books was to permit us to exercise that faculty. Art, he said, was a controlled madness… He said books weren't made of themes, which you could write essays about, but of images that inserted themselves into your brain and replaced what you were seeing with your eyes.

All art is a form of artifice.For in art there can be no prejudices.

Art is the microscope of the mind, which sharpens the wit as the other does the sight; and converts every object into a little universe in itself. Art may be said to draw aside the veil from nature. To those who are perfectly unskilled in the practice, unimbued with the principles of art, most objects present only a confused mass.

Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct and to refrain from destruction.

If I would not be able to create music, I would create art or something else. Perhaps cooking.

We are all born artists. ... Almost everything kids do is art.

I don't understand how people live without creating.

Without electricity, there can be no art.

Art is embedded in nature and they who can extract it, have it.

I would advise puppeteering for any artist. It's a way to break down pretensions. It's a sculpture that can talk. It's a painting that can talk. And it's pure play. I think every artist needs to stay in touch with the idea of playing. The artist should always be playing, always. All art is performance.

The most pleasurable thing in the world, for me, is to see something and then translate how I see it.