"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.