Daniel Buren quotes

Every act is political and, whether one is conscious of it or not, the presentation of one's work is no exception. Any production, any work of art is social, has a political significance. We are obliged to pass over the sociological aspect of the proposition before us due to lack of space and consideration of priority among the questions to be analysed. (Daniel Buren)
I agree with Rosenberg's text that says anything is art as soon as it is put in a museum. And that is why artists are such appalling things, since they are responsible for this state of affairs in art.
Daniel Buren
More and more, the subject of an exhibition tends not be the display of artworks, but the exhibition of the exhibition as a work of art. Here, the Documenta team, headed by Harald Szeemann, exhibits (artworks) and exposes itself.
Daniel Buren
When we say architecture, we include the social, political and économie context. Architecture of any sort is in fact the inévitable background, support and frame of any work.
Daniel Buren
Every place radically imbues (formally, architecturally, sociologically, politically) with its meaning the object (work creation) shown there. Art in general refuses to be implied a priori and so pretends to ignore or reject the draconian role imposed by the museum (the gallery), a role both cultural and architectural. To reveal this limit (this role), the object presented and its place of display must dialectically imply one another.
Daniel Buren
My painting, at the limit, can only signify itself... It is. So much so, and so well, that anyone can make it and claim it... Perhaps the only thing that one can do after having seen a canvas like ours is total revolution.
Daniel Buren
Art is the illusion of disorientation, the illusion of liberty, the illusion of presence, the illusion of the sacred, the illusion of Nature. ... Not the painting of Buren, Mosset, Parmentier or Toroni.... Art is a distraction, art is false. Painting begins with Buren, Mosset, Parmentier, Toroni.
Daniel Buren
The work of art... in seemingly by-passing all difficulties, attains full freedom, thus in fact nourishing the prevailing ideology. It functions as a security valve for the system, an image of freedom in the midst of general alienation and finally as a bourgeois concept supposedly beyond all criticism, natural, above and beyond all ideology.
Daniel Buren
Putting a shovel in a gallery or museum signified "this shovel has become art.” And it actually was. The action itself is art, because the artist projects himself in choosing the shovel, and especially in placing it out of context. It is art in the sense that the imprint of a hand in a cave is art, the Mona Lisa is art, a happening is art, etc. It is a problem that touches on the ethics and function of the artist: he assumes the right to have this supra-human calling that allows him to say to others, "everything that I touch with my hand is transformed into art.” The artist imposes his anguish, his vision of the world, and himself on others. The artist emasculates the observer. Maybe he thinks that the latter deserves no better . . . The artist assumes the right to show you what you can see for yourself, what you could obviously see much more clearly without his intervention. I contest this right.
Daniel Buren