Robert Barry quotes:

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Everybody is always satisfied with what I do.

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.

But if I did read, say, [Maurice] Merleau-Ponty, for instance, it always seemed to me that the parts that I understood in what he was talking about - and I read him because - well, he wrote a book, well, the Phenomenology of Perception [New York: Humanities Press, 1962]. And it seemed to me that perception had a lot do with how we take in art.

I am good in the fact that most of my reviews have been very positive really. I get pretty good reviews. There have been some that aren't - critical. I think they are extremely - the people that wrote them really don't understand what they are looking at quite frankly or have a very preconceived notion of what conceptual art should be or where I am at or the fact that I may change what I have done from what I did 20 years ago. But there is always some reason that they just sort of get it wrong. And so it certainly doesn't affect my work.

A text makes the word more specific. It really kind of defines it within the context in which it is being used. If it is just taken out of a context and presented as a sort of object, which is what - you know, which is a contemporary art idea, you know. It is like an old surrealist idea or an old cubist idea to take something out of context and put it in a completely different context. And it sort of gives it a different meaning and creates another world, another kind of world in which we enter.

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.

After I did the drawings of trees combining them with words, I started doing - I did that for a very short time. Then it kind of - that sort of evolved into just showing the branches of a tree coming down into the trunk and then going into the root system. So I showed both the branches and the roots of a tree, which were about equal. There is as much going on under the ground as is going on above the ground, which you can see.

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.

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

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.

And when you are operating within your style, which is your world, which you operate in, then it also would make sense to you. Now, whether it makes sense to anybody outside is besides the point really. You just do it and then you find that other people kind of begin to relate to it and allow themselves to get into your way of thinking about things.

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.

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

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

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.

Heidegger wrote a book called Was Ist Das Ding - What Is a Thing? which was kind of interesting and influential to me, as a matter of fact. It's a small paperback, which I read. It's about the nature of thingness; what is it? It's a very penetrating analysis of that, and I think a rather influential book. I know other artists who have read it and come up with it.

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

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 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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

I consider drawings finished works of art, first of all. However, the ideas can be something that can be developed into something larger. I don't make so many drawings anymore since I'm working with language. I used to make more when I worked with sculptural things, especially the wire pieces.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

I have never had a shortage of ideas for shows. I always just do them and the gallerists don't - they stopped long ago trying to tell me what I should show in their gallery. They just don't even do it. I show whatever I want to show. They are very happy and as far as I know, they have always been very pleased with whatever I have shown, even if it is nothing to sell.

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.

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

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

I like a lot of good European films, good - anything really. I'm a big fan of Netflix and I get films from them all the time. If I hear about something that I don't know, that I haven't seen, forgot about, I immediately jot it down and add it to my Netflix list or if there's a film that's available that I haven't seen for many years, I get that.

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.

I like contrasting between black and white and color.

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

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

I loved music. Music was a big thing and so I started collecting records. I had a large collection of jazz records and that was something else I used to listen to. At night, there was a - what the heck was his name? There was a famous - Jazzbo Collins, I used to listen to at night, and some other guys.

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.

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.

I make videos which are works of art in themselves which have nothing to do with Hollywood movies or anything along those lines and I like videos because they deal with light and dark and time and change and they're just another kind of medium that I can get into and work with when I choose to other than, say, doing something on the wall or a window.

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

I mean, part of the justification for art is art history, the fact that you're part of this tradition. You can't really operate outside of it. So looking for what this work is really about, if I look at Velázquez, if I look at Las Meninas or The Tapestry Weavers [1657] or something and really study it and try to figure out what that painting is really about, then I find relationships between what I'm trying to do and what he was doing.

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

I never stop thinking about what I have to do. Let's put it that way. The only thing that takes me out of that is probably a film. I watch a lot of movies.

I prefer music but sometimes if there's on talk radio - someone might be on that I like. I listen to the old - to "Air America," down at the - liberal talk shows and things like that I find kind of nice, their criticizing the conservatives. I find that quite relaxing, entertaining, but music, a lot of music.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

I think I feel much more at home in studio.

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.

I think words speak to us even though they may be written on a wall. So we hear them in our mind. We say it to ourselves. But they are also visual things. You draw them. They are designed. They are colored. They have a certain size. I put them in a certain place. So they are objects that have to be - artistic decisions have to be made in terms of the color and the size and the line and whatever.

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

I took art courses, only in the sense that I was able to - I took art classes, which were fun, which I liked, but it was a - just a kind of a general education that I got, a regular academic - academic diploma, but I kind of had the feeling that art was something that I really liked the most but I wasn't really sure that that was it.

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

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.

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.

I wanted my style to be very recognizable.

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

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.

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.

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

I was an adjunct. I never got tenure, never had it. I was a professor, though. But I never got tenure. I never really wanted tenure, to tell you the truth. Really wasn't - the guys who got - the tenured people were some of, like, the least interesting. And they were people I didn't really like very much anyway.

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.

I was good at art - always good at art.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

People who look at art don't really - don't go with the artist. They don't sort of accept what he or she has done and kind of go with it. There are always - either there's too much color or not enough color, either it's not conceptual enough or it's too conceptual. In other words, most criticism isn't what the viewer expected that it would do based on what they think you have done and that's good as far as I'm concerned.

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.

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.

So it sort of dawned on me that you have to build into your work the fact that it's going to be shown in different kinds of places and different kinds of light. And the fact that the surroundings and where you're going to be shown is always changing, so that should really not affect the meaning of the work. It should be part of what the work is about.

Teaching I realized took up a lot of my time. I was a kind of a teacher that spent time with students, spoke to them after class, tried to help them out. I'd talk with them personally about their work and try to get out of them what they were thinking about, forcing them to thinking seriously and not just falling back on all the ideas that they had picked up someplace. And so I took my job teaching very seriously and that - as a result, it took up a lot of time.

The big thing is I try not to repeat.

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.

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

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.

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

The idea of, say, the compressed space between the floor and the object hanging over it and then the long space between the object and the ceiling was a kind of interesting idea for me - the idea of compressing and expanding. That was an idea that I worked with, which you could only do sculpturally. You can't really do with a painting on the wall.

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.

The only problems I sometimes have is if I ask for a piece for a group show, if I ask for a piece - I would like to put it into a show, sometimes the collectors get possessive about it and don't want to let something happen. Say you get full credit, you know. You give them your name, the catalog and it always enhances the value of the piece, you know, the more shows it is in, blah, blah, blah.

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

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.