Robert Barry
Robert Barry
Robert Barryis an American artist. Since 1967, Barry has produced non-material works of art, installations, and performance art using a variety of otherwise invisible media. In 1968, Robert Barry is quoted as saying "Nothing seems to me the most potent thing in the world."...
ProfessionPerformance Artist
Date of Birth9 March 1936
taken made
I had always taken photos - always, always taken photos, made movies.
people silence radio
You can't have silence on the radio; people will turn away from the station.
pieces sound bigs
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.
xenon years names
There's a kind of poetic aspect to inert gas. And remember, first of all, they were completely unknown a hundred years earlier. We just didn't know about them. And then when they were discovered in the atmosphere, the idea that this is a material that would breathe in and exhale and becomes part of us for a while made it even more intriguing. The names, the Greek names, are interesting, too - if you translate neon, xenon and so forth are kind of interesting.
book thinking artist
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.
mind doe weak
And the mind actually does generate electrical currents - very weak ones and not necessarily ones that can be picked up by anyone else.
art political belief
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.
art criticism should
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.
art ideas understanding
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.
aunt parent my-family
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.
thinking people style
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.
work-out easy possessive
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.
summer fashion lines
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.
art ideas
I have a lot of ideas for art. And it is really - I don't really have time to do them all.