Quotessence
Home / Authors / Vito Acconci
Vito Acconci

Vito Acconci Quotes

Designer

Filter quotes by topic

AllWritingArtPeopleThinkingSpaceKindWantedArchitectureWorldIfsPagesPersonsWantBuildingImportantTryingArchitectFirstsI CanKnows

Famous Vito Acconci Quotes

“When a building is so complete within itself, I always think, "Why do I even have to go inside it?" I would love to do architecture that people can have a free hand in the making of it. We've done spaces where things are hinged and they can go out or in, but that's not freedom. That's supermarket freedom, or the notion that you can have anything you want as long as the supermarket carries it. We would love to do a space where you go inside and there's nothing there. You might have a seat and when you don't need it anymore you get up and it disappears.”

PeopleThinkingLongDoneBuildingDisappearArchitecture
Author:Vito Acconci
Create image

“It was an incredible way to grow up, because words that you're taught - these definite things - you realize they sort of beautifully fall apart; that words are tenuous. In the middle of a large word, there's a small word that possibly contradicts the larger word. So I grew up where, on the one hand, the only thing I would ever think of doing was something in writing, music, or art, and on the other hand, I could've reacted strongly against it because it would've been a way to rebel.”

ThinkingWritingArtFallRealizingGrowing UpIncrediblesRebelFalling Apart
Author:Vito Acconci
Create image

“Maybe I can pull at my breast in a kind of futile attempt to develop a woman's breast. It's not that simple to become a woman. But I think what was important, when I think back on that work, is something like The Little Engine That Could. It's me saying, I think I can, I think I can. Though I'm doing something I obviously can't, it's the process toward it that is important. The will toward it, the effort . . . My work was about getting to a place that you couldn't get to.”

ThinkingKindImportantSimpleEffort
Author:Vito Acconci
Create image

“What I never wanted in art - and why I probably didn't belong in art - was that I never wanted viewers. I think the basic condition of art is the viewer: The viewer is here, the art is there. So the viewer is in a position of desire and frustration. There were those Do Not Touch signs in a museum that are saying that the art is more expensive than the people. But I wanted users and a habitat. I don't know if I would have used those words then, but I wanted inhabitants, participants. I wanted an interaction.”

PeopleThinkingArtDesireArt IsFrustrationUsers
Author:Vito Acconci
Create image

“The kind of influence you want is a much deeper influence. It's like empowerment. Things are like this, but what if they were like that? What happens if you turn everything inside out? It's something that not just artists do. I think scientists do that, too. There's a theory: What if we pour water on it? That's also what a child does. If a child came in now, the child would ignore us, go under the table, and make a house.”

ThinkingKindChildrenArtistHouseWaterInfluenceEmpowermentScientistWhat If
Author:Vito Acconci
Create image