Richard Serra citations

“I was in analysis and I told my analyst I wanted to be the best sculptor in the world and he said: "Richard, calm down."”

“Basically, that is my subject: I use steel to organize space.”

“To see is to think, and to think is to see.”

“I think if you want to make art, at some point you have to suspend judgment, and you have to involve yourself with play and not worry about the outcome.”

“You can talk about the 'how' and the 'what', but "when you get to the "why" it gets a little more difficult.”

“Space, as my work evolved, really became my subject.”

“With any work of art, what happens is if you're open to seeing it you probably have a sensation," he tells the talk show host, "and that sensation leads to an experience and that experience is private and deals with your background, where you were born, what you've been exposed to, who you know, what your education was; and it will lead to other ways of thinking about other things.”

“Don't start telling me buildings are works of art, because I don't buy it.”

“(.. as a practicing artist) You're competing against who came before and came after. You're just another stone in the wall, and if you make a contribution you're lucky.”

“The steel and the space, or the object and the void, become one and the same.”