"Det har vært min tese at post-modernismen er en logisk videreføring av modernitetens bestrebelser. Den analytiske og livsfjerne rasjonalitet som utfolder seg i det moderne prosjekt tømmer virkeligheten for værensfylde og spalter dens enhet i separate gyldighetsområder, for så til sist å servere det hele som usammenhengende fragmenter. Dette er post-modernismens utgangsposisjon, der så vel verden som bevisstheten er pulverisert til particularia. Hvilket innebærer at det ikke lenger går forpliktelseslinjer, verken til nåtiden eller til fremtiden"

Grøtvedt, Paul. 1987. Moderniteten og Post-Modernismen. Et essay om kunst og tenkning. pp.139. Oslo: Aventura Forlag.

"Conceptual art is not necessarily logical. The logic of a piece or series of pieces is a device that is used at times only to be ruined. Logic may be used to camouflage the real intent of the artist, to lull the viewer into the belief that he understands the work, or to infer a paradoxical situation (such as logic vs illogic).* The ideas need not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple. Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem inevitable. In terms of idea the artist is free even to surprise himself. Ideas are discovered by intuition.

*Some ideas are logical in conception and illogical perceptually."

Source: Sol Lewitt. 1967. "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art". Artforum, 5 n¤.10 (June 1967): 79-83. Reprinted in Garrels, Gary, ed. 2000. Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective. pp. 369-371. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

"In conceptual art the idea or concept is the most important aspect of the work.* When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from the dependence of the skill of the artist as craftsman. It is the objective of the artist who is concerned with conceptual art to make his work mentally interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the conceptual artist is out to bore the viewer. It is only the expectation of an emotional kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist art is accustomed, that would deter the viewer from perceiving this art.

*In other forms of art the concept may be changed in the process of execution"

Source: Sol Lewitt. 1967. "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art". Artforum, 5 n¤.10 (June 1967): 79-83. Reprinted in Garrels, Gary, ed. 2000. Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective. pp. 369-371. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

"Conceptual art is good only when the idea is good"


Sol Lewitt. 1967. "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art". Artforum, 5 n¤.10 (June 1967): 79-83. Reprinted in Garrels, Gary, ed. 2000. Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective. pp. 369-371. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

"The editor has written me that he is in favor of avoiding 'The notion that the artist is a kind of ape that has to explained by the civilised critic.' This should be good news to both artists and apes"


Sol Lewitt. 1967. "Paragraphs on Conceptual Art". Artforum, 5 n¤.10 (June 1967): 79-83. Reprinted in Garrels, Gary, ed. 2000. Sol Lewitt: A Retrospective. pp. 369-371. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.

"My ideal postmodernist author neither merely repudiated nor merely imitates either his twentieth-century Modernist parents or his nineteenth-century premodernist grandparents. He has the first half of our century under his belt, but not on his back. Without lapsing into moral or artistic simplism, shoddy craftsmanship, Madison Avenue venality, or either false nor real naiveté, he nevertheless aspires to a fiction more democratic in its appeal than such late-modernist marvels (by my definition and my judgement) as Beckett's Stories and Texts for Nothing or Nabokov's Pale Fire. He may not hope to reach and move the devotees of James Michener and Irving Wallace - not to mention the lobotomized mass-media illiterates. But he should hope to reach and delight, at least part of the time, beyond the circle of what Mann used to call the Early Christians: professional devotees of high art"

Source: John Barth, "The Literature of Replenishment, Postmodernist Fiction", The Atlantic, January 1980, pp. 65-71. quoted in Charles Jencks. 1986. What is Post-Modernism? Third Edition 1989. pp. 9. Academy Editions London/ St. Martin's Press New York.

"The word and concept [of Post-Modernism] have changed over fifty years and have only reached such clarification in the last ten. (...) 'What is Post-Modernism?' It is a question, as well as the answer I will give, and one must see that its continual growth and movement mean that no definitive answer is possible - at least until it stops moving"

Source: Charles Jencks. 1986. What is Post-Modernism? Third Edition 1989. Page 7. Academy Editions London/ St. Martin's Press New York.

"Post-Modernism is fundamentally the eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of the immediate past: it is both the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence. Its best works are characteristically doubly-coded and ironic, making a feature of the wide choice, conflict and discontinuity of traditions, because this heteregeneity most clearly captures our pluralism. Its hybrid style is opposed to the minimalism of Late-Modern ideology and all revivals which are based on an exclusive dogma or taste"

Source: Charles Jencks. 1986. What is Post-Modernism? Third Edition 1989. Page 7. Academy Editions London/ St. Martin's Press New York.

"The Post-Modern Age is a time of incessant choosing. It's an era when no orthodoxy can be adopted without self-consiousness and irony, because all traditions seem to have some validity."

Source: Charles Jencks. 1986. What is Post-Modernism? Third Edition 1989. Page 7. Academy Editions London/ St. Martin's Press New York.

"Post-Modernism is fundamentally the eclectic mixture of any tradition with that of the immediate past: it is both the continuation of Modernism and its transcendence"

Source: Charles Jencks. 1986. What is Post-Modernism? Third Edition 1989. Page 7. Academy Editions London/ St. Martin's Press New York.

"The modern age, which sounds as if it would last forever, is fast becoming a thing of the past. Industrialisation is quickly giving way to Post-Industrialisation, factory labour to home and office work and, in the arts, the tradition of the New is leading to the combination of many traditions. (...) The Post-Modern Age is a time of incessant choosing. It's an era when no orthodoxy can be adopted without self-consiousness and irony, because all traditions seem to have some validity. This is partly a consequence of what is called the information explosion, the advent of organised knowledge, world communication and cybernetics. It is not only the rich who become collectors, eclectic travellers in time with a superabundance of choice, but almost every urban dweller. Pluralism, the 'ism' of our time, is both the great problem and the great oportunity: where Everyman becomes a Cosmopolite and Everywoman a Liberated individual, confusion and anxiety become ruling states of mind and ersatz a common form of mass-culture. This is the price we pay for a Post-Modern Age, as heavy in its way as the monotony, dogmatism and poverty of the modern epoch. But, in spite of many attempts in Iran and elsewhere, it is impossible to return to a previous culture and industrial form, impose a fundamentalist religion or even a Modernist orthodoxy. Once a world communication system and form of cybernetic production have emerged they create their own necessities and they are, barring a nuclear war, irreversible."

Source: Charles Jencks. 1986. What is Post-Modernism? Third Edition 1989. Page 7. Academy Editions London/ St. Martin's Press New York.

"The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody. ”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

Her er passasjersvøpet, skralt og tynt;
- har dog i smaken en snev av Peer Gynt.
Innenfor her har vi gullgraver-jeget;
saften er vekk - om det noen har eiet.
Her er oldtidsgranskeren, kort, men kraftig.
Og her er profeten, fersk og saftig.
Han stinker, som skrevet står, av løgne,
så en ærlig mann kan få vann i øyne.
Det neste tykkes mykt. Det har svarte streger;
- svart kan ligne både prest og neger.
Det var en ustyrtelig mengde lag!
Kommer ikke kjernen snart for en dag?
Nei - Gud om den gjør! Til det innerste indre
er altsammen lag - bare mindre og mindre.
- Henrik Ibsen: Peer Gynt

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new."
- Albert Einstein

Source: Einstein, Albert. Quoted in The Quotations Page. Available Online from URL http://quotationspage.com/quote/4691.html [Downloaded 2009-09-28]

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
- Albert Einstein

Source: Einstein, Albert. Quoted in URL http://home.online.no/~kamillao/quotes/einstein.html [Downloaded 2009-09-28]

"Try not to become a man of success but rather to become a man of value."
- Albert Einstein

Source: Einstein, Albert. Quoted in URL http://home.online.no/~kamillao/quotes/einstein.html [Downloaded 2009-09-28]

"It is the theory that decides what we can observe."
- Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)

Source: Einstein, Albert. Quoted in The Quotations Page. Available Online from URL http://quotationspage.com/quote/4691.html [Downloaded 2009-09-28]

"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory."
- Friedrich Engels (1820 - 1895)

Source: Engels, Friedrich. Quoted in The Quotations Page. Available Online from URL http://quotationspage.com/quote/33399.html [Downloaded 2009-09-28]

"In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice; In practice, there is."
- Chuck Reid

Source: Reid, Chuck. Quoted in The Quotations Page. Available Online from URL http://quotationspage.com/quote/879.html [Downloaded 2009-09-28]

"He hoped and prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife."
- Douglas Adams

Source: Adams, Douglas. Quoted in The Quotations Page. Available Online from URL http://quotationspage.com/quotes/Douglas_Adams/ [Downloaded 2009-09-28]

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
- Douglas Adams

Source: Adams, Douglas. Last Chance to See. Online from URL http://quotationspage.com/quotes/Douglas_Adams/ [Downloaded 2009-09-28].

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
- Douglas Adams

Source: Adams, Douglas. Quoted in The Quotations Page. Available Online from URL http://quotationspage.com/quotes/Douglas_Adams/ [Downloaded 2009-09-28]

"Of course, our failures are a consequence of many factors, but possibly one of the most important is the fact that society operates on the theory that specialization is the key to success, not realizing that specialization precludes comprehensive thinking."
- Richard Buckminster Fuller

Source: Fuller, R. Buckminister. 1963. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. Quoted in The Quotations Page. Available from URL http://quotationspage.com/quote/34114.html [Downloaded 2009-09-28].

"If human life were long enough to find the ultimate theory, everything would have been solved by previous generations. Nothing would be left to be discovered."
- Stephen Hawking (1942 - )

Source: Hawking, Stephen. 2005. Interview with The Guardian (UK) September 27, 2005. Quoted in The Quotations Page. Available from URL http://quotationspage.com/quote/37152.html [Downloaded 2009-09-28]

"All art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously, but often deliberately, propaganda."
- Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

Source: Sinclair, Upton. 1925. Mammonart - an Essay in Economic Interpretation. in Ch. 2 "Who Owns the Artists?". Pasadena: Self. Quoted in Wikiquote. "Upton Sinclair". Available from URL http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair [Downloaded 2009-09-27].

"What life means to me is to put the content of Shelley into the form of Zola. The proletarian writer is a writer with a purpose; he thinks no more of "art for art's sake" than a man on a sinking ship thinks of painting a beautiful picture in the cabin; he thinks of getting ashore — and then there will be time enough for art."
- Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

Source: Upton Sinclair in Cosmopolitan, 1906, quoted in SWADOS, Harvey. 1962. Radical's America. Little, Brown and Company. Available online from URL http://www.archive.org/stream/radicalsamericaa010992mbp/radicalsamericaa010992mbp_djvu.txt. [Downloaded 2009-09-27]

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it"
- Upton Sinclair (1878-1968)

Source: Sinclair, Upton. 1935. I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked, ISBN 0-520-08198-6; repr. University of California Press, 1994, p. 109. Quoted in Wikiquote. "Upton Sinclair". Available from URL http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair [Downloaded 2009-09-27].

"Do not judge men by mere appearances; for the light laughter that bubbles on the lip often mantles over the depths of sadness"
- Edward Chapin

"The event that made conceivable the realization that it was possible to 'speak another language' and still make sense in art was marcel Duchamps' first unassigned readymade. With the unassisted readymade, art changed its focus trom the form of the language to what was being said. Which means that it changed the nature of art from a question of morphology to a question of function. This change - one from 'appearance' to 'conception' - was the beginning of 'modern art' and the beginning of 'conceptual art'. "
- Peter Osborne

Source: Osborne, Peter. 2002. Conceptual Art. p. 13. London: Phaidon Press.

All art (after Duchamps) is conceptual (in nature) because art only exists conceptually
- Joseph Kosuth

Source: Joseph Kosuth, in "Art after Philosophy", 1969, quoted in Osborne, Peter. 2002. Conceptual Art. London: Phaidon Press.

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

"The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity."
- Ludwig Wittgenstein

"Biennals are the art world's GPS and, to remain faithful to my metaphor, the satellites in a GPS system are also quite far removed from the centre. Biennals, triennals, documenta; they all help us navigate through a difficult art scene. An art scene that - since the world becomes steadily smaller, with seemingly shorter distances between the centre and the periphery, and between continents and cultures - becomes more and more facetted and complex. The art world has a rhizomatic structure; a network, where different quality criteria exist: There is no single answer but many, and here lies both the interesting and the challenging. Biennals help us see the big picture; significan trends, the most important. They help us classify."
- Jørgen Blitzner

Source: Blitzner. 2009. "Survey" p. 36-38. In Localised, edited by Anne Szefer Karlsen, Morten Kvamme, Arne Skaug Olsen. Bergen: Ctr+Z Publishing.
Note: Translated from Norwegian by Gillian Carson

"Biennals are the art world's GPS"
- Jørgen Blitzner

Source: Blitzner. 2009. "Survey" p. 36-38. In Localised, edited by Anne Szefer Karlsen, Morten Kvamme, Arne Skaug Olsen. Bergen: Ctr+Z Publishing.
Note: Translated from Norwegian by Gillian Carson

"Just as markets are now rethinking the viability of disposable culture, it's high time for the art world to consider sustainable practices too."
- Renee Turner

Source: Turner, Renee. 2009. "The novelty is gone, and that's the perfect place to begin" p. 31-35. In Localised, edited by Anne Szefer Karlsen, Morten Kvamme, Arne Skaug Olsen. Bergen: Ctr+Z Publishing.
Note: This text can be downloaded in full fromt the author's website: http://www.fudgethefacts.com/?p=200

"Too often the art world emulates traditional market values and dynamics when it comes to exhibition making. One year it's this curator with that theme, and the next, it's another theme with another curator. Under the auspices of originality and novelty, trends dictate that the old must make way for the new. Just as markets are now rethinking the viability of disposable culture, it's high time for the art world to consider sustainable practices too. This does not mean there is no space for radical breaks, to the contrary divergent approaches should be encouraged. But even in rebellion, those developments should be informed by previous experiences."
- Renee Turner

Source: Turner, Renee. 2009. "The novelty is gone, and that's the perfect place to begin" p. 31-35. In Localised, edited by Anne Szefer Karlsen, Morten Kvamme, Arne Skaug Olsen. Bergen: Ctr+Z Publishing.
Note: This text can be downloaded in full fromt the author's website: http://www.fudgethefacts.com/?p=200

"To use a magnifying glass is to pay attention, but isn't paying attention already having a magnifying glass?"
- Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962)

Source: Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space. Page 158. Bacon press: Boston.

"I once read somewhere that a hermit who was watching his hour-glass without praying, heard noises that split his eardrums. He suddenly heard the catastrophe of time, in the hour-glass. The tick tock of our watches is so mechanically jerky that we no longer have ears subtle enough to hear the passage of time"
- Gaston Bachelard (1884-1962)

Source: Bachelard, Gaston. 1994. The Poetics of Space. Page 164. Bacon press: Boston.

"Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity."
- Damien Hirst

"All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness."
- Eckhart Tolle

"Colour is the essence of painting, which the subject always killed."

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

"Only dull and impotent artists screen their work with sincerity. In art there is need for truth, not sincerity."

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Source: Malevich, Kasimir. From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting. Translation by T.Anderson (ed.), K.S. Malevich: Essays on Art 1915-1933, vol. 1, Copenhagen, 1969, pp. 19-21, 23-5, 26-36 and 38-41. Printed in: Harrison & Wood (ed). Art in Theory. 1900-2000. An Anthology Of Changing Ideas. Malden: Blackwell Publishing, pp173-183.

With the most primitive means the artist creates something which the most ingenious and efficient technology will never be able to create.

- Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935)

Once you hear the details of victory it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat
- Jean Paul Sartre

On est mille contre mille
A se croire les plus forts
Mais à l`heure imbécile
Où ça fait deux mille morts
On se retrouve seul
- Jacques Brel (1929-1978), "Seul"

I always admired atheists. I think it takes a lot of faith.
- Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider, Northern Exposure, Seoul Mates, 1991

The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
- Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828 - 1882)

There is nobody as enslaved as the fanatic, the person in whom one impulse, one value, has assumed ascendancy over all others.
- Milton R. Sapirstein

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.
- Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

Good taste is the enemy of creativity
- Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)

Men cling passionately to old traditions and display intense reluctance to modify customary modes of behavior, as innovators at all times have found to their cost. The dead-weight of conservatism, largely a lazy and cowardly distaste for the strenuous and painful activity of real thinking, has undoubtedly retarded human progress..
- V. Gordon Childe, Man Makes Himself, p. 31

Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
- William Shakespeare (1564 - 1616), "Julius Caesar", Act II Scene 2

A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)

Do not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.
- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950), Man and Superman (1903), Maxims for Revolutionists

Good taste is the worst vice ever invented
- Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)