Robert Irwin Quotations

To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings or objects at all. What we are really dealing with is our state of consciousness and the shape of our perception.

The act of art is a tool for extended consciousness.

The act of art has turned to a direct examination of our perceptual processes.

We have chosen that experience out of the realm of expereiences to be defined as "art" because having this label it is given special attention. Perhaps this is all art means.

If that state of consciousness I keep talking about became, in a sense, the consciousness of society as a whole, if we really thought in those terms, and were really that aware, . . . really that sense-sophisticated, then our art would be an integral part of our society and the artist as a separate discipline or art as a separate event would not exist.

Perhaps the furture role of the aritst will be to act directly as the arbiter of qualities in our livess. Quality not as an add-on, as it is now, but as a criteria in all matters of planning.

Any tool you use is legitimate. The key to the tool is whether it has the dimensions to deal with what have become your questions. I consider art as a thought form more than anything else.

My art ahs never been about ideas...My interest in art has never been about abstraction; it has always been about experience. . . . My pieces were never meant to be dealt with intellectually as ideas, but to be considered experientially.

From Robert Irwin. Part 1: Prologue:x18(3) Part II: Homage to the Square
www.diacenter.org/irwin/quotes.html.