Sol LeWitt

The system is the work of art; the visual work of art is the proof of the System. The visual aspect can't be understood without understanding the system. It isn't what it looks like but what it is that is of basic importance.

All of the significant art of today stems from Conceptual art. This includes the art of installation, political, feminist and socially directed art.

I believe that the artist's involvement in the capitalist structure is disadvantageous to the artist and forces him to produce objects in order to live.

I was not interested in irony; I wanted to emphasize the primacy of the idea in making art.

The artist is seen like a producer of commodities, like a factory that turns our refrigerators.

Just as the development of earth art and installation art stemmed from the idea of taking art out of the galleries, the basis of my involvement with public art is a continuation of wall drawings.

Unless you're involved with thinking about what you're doing, you end up doing the same thing over and over, and that becomes tedious and, in the end, defeating.

The thinking of John Cage derived from Duchamp and Dada. I was not interested in that.

The narrative of serial art works more like music than like literature.

In my case, I used the elements of these simple forms - square, cube, line and color - to produce logical systems. Most of these systems were finite; that is, they were complete using all possible variations. This kept them simple.

The other great development has been in photography, but that too was influenced by Conceptual art.

I didn't want to save art - I respected the older artists too much to think art needed saving. But I knew it was finished, even though, at that time, I didn't know what I would do.