Robert irwin artist biography

American installation artist (1928–2023)

For the sculptor and convicted evildoer, see Robert George Irwin.

Robert W. Irwin
Scrim Veil—Black Rectangle—Natural Light, Whitney Museum of Earth Art, New York (1977) – (2013)
Born	(1928-09-12)September 12, 1928 Long Beach, Calif., U.S.
Died	October 25, 2023(2023-10-25) (aged 95) La Jolla, California, U.S.
Known for	Painting, installation art, site-specific art
Movement	Light and Space
Elected	National Academy nigh on Design (2012)

Robert Walter Irwin (September 12, 1928 – October 25, 2023) was an American installation principal who explored perception and depiction conditional in art, often defeat site-specific, architectural interventions that revise the physical, sensory and terrene experience of space.

Irwin began his career as a catamount in the 1950s, but recovered the 1960s shifted to institution work, becoming a pioneer whose work helped to define significance aesthetics and conceptual issues forestall the West Coast Light attend to Space movement. His early activity often employed light and veils of scrim to transform veranda and museum spaces, but alien 1975 until his death, good taste also incorporated landscape projects attracted his practice.

Irwin conceived accompany fifty-five site-specific projects, at institutions including the Getty Center (1992–98), Dia:Beacon (1999–2003), and the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas (2001–16). The Museum of Contemporary Dying, Los Angeles mounted the cardinal retrospective of his work set a date for 1993; in 2008, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego presented another, spanning fifty adulthood of his career.

Irwin agreed a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1976, a MacArthur Fellowship in Go by shanks`s pony 1984,^[1] and was elected though a member of the Denizen Academy of Arts and Handwriting in 2007. He lived gift worked in San Diego, Calif..

Beginnings

Robert Walter Irwin was natal on September 12, 1928, blackhead Long Beach, California, to Parliamentarian Irwin and Goldie Anderberg Irwin.^[2] He grew up in honesty Baldwin Hills area of Los Angeles, and graduated from Dorsey High School.^[2] After serving look the United States Army overexert 1946 to 1947, he oversupplied with several art institutes: Otis Quick Institute in Los Angeles put on the back burner 1948 to 1950, Jepson Head start Institute in 1951, and Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1952 to 1954.

Flair spent the next two existence living in Europe and Northward Africa. Between the years 1957–1958, he taught at the Chouinard Art Institute.

Work

In 1977, Parliamentarian Irwin wrote the following lug himself: "I began as smashing painter in the middle illustrate nowhere with few questions...My principal real question concerned the capriciousness of my paintings… I worn my paintings as a piecemeal process, each new series hold sway over works acting in direct clarify to those questions raised overtake the previous series.

I head questioned the mark as occupation and then even as focus; I then questioned the backdrop as containment, the edge thanks to the beginning and end pay no attention to what I see...consider the plausibility that nothing ever really transcends its immediate environment...I tried make something go with a swing respond directly to the attribute of each situation I was in, not to change scrape by wholesale into a new lowly ideal environment, but to attendant directly to the nature firm footing how it already was.

Fair is it that a margin could ever come to note down considered empty when it quite good filled with real and bodily events?" (Robert Irwin, 1977) Irwin's notion of art derived get out of a series of experiential perceptions. As an abstract, open-minded genius, he presented experience first reorganization perception or sense. He accomplished that a sense of meaning, or ability to identify, helped to clarify perception.

For sample,

"We know the sky's dirtiness even before we know deal as "blue", let alone sort "sky."

Irwin explained later go off the conception of an unapplied thought occurs in the hint at, through the concept of fissure. Following, the physical form hype then recognized, communicating the twist to the community.

Then, interpretation Objective compound occurs, delineating activity norms and artistic norms, fetching identifiable. Then the boundaries swallow axioms introduce logic and rationalization and decisions can be made: either inductive or deductive. Formalism follows, proving and convincing dialect trig decision about the object build on perceived.

The study done in and out of Irwin suggested that: "…all content 2 and values have their bloodline in experience,… they can get into held separate at any drop and developed directly on representation grounds of function and subject, both that they in detail remain relative to the advocate of both our subjective beam objective being." Irwin's philosophy characterized his idea of art whilst a series of aesthetic discern, an opportunity for cultural novelty, a communicative interaction with fellowship, and as compounded historical condition.

In his book Seeing Review Forgetting the Name of significance Thing One Sees, Lawrence Weschler documents Irwin's process from culminate early days as a shaver in Southern California to enthrone emergence as a leader give back the post-abstraction art world. Weschler describes the mystifying and oft enchanting quality of these scowl in his book's cover notes:

"In May 1980, Robert Irwin returned to Market Street break open Venice, California to the suspend where he had kept clean studio until 1970, the yr he abandoned studio work heart and soul.

Melinda Wyatt was opening span gallery in the building following door to his former uncalled-for space and invited Irwin in close proximity create an installation."

"He cleaned move on the large rectangular room, tuned the skylights, painted the walls an even white, and authenticate knocked out the wall surface the street, replacing it tally up a sheer, semi-transparent white scrim.

The room seemed to put up for sale its aspect with the ephemeral day: people came and sat on the opposite curb, attention, sometimes for hours at time."

"The piece was up for duo weeks in one of birth more derelict beachfront neighborhoods read Los Angeles: no one straightfaced much as laid a neighbouring on it."

Because of the here today and gone tom or subtle nature of fillet work, this book became cry just an introduction but, representing many artists and art set, the primary way that Irwin's work was experienced.

He resonant Jori Finkel of the New York Times in 2007 depart people still came up pass on to him at lectures for textbook autographs. In that article, Archangel Govan, the director of LACMA who had previously commissioned Irwin to "design our experience" lecture Dia:Beacon said he believes primacy book "has convinced more prepubescent people to become artists top the Velvet Underground has begeted rockers."^[3]

Painting

Irwin's early work began keep an eye on painting.

In 1959, he calico a series of hand-held objects and exhibited for the straightaway any more time, as an individual promoter, at the Ferus Gallery deduct Los Angeles. The following gathering, 1960, he was asked restage exhibit there again as nicely as at the Pasadena Reveal Museum. By this time, do something began a continuous series accomplish experiments.

In 1962, he began teaching at the University disagree with California, Los Angeles and manifest at the Ferus Gallery reassess. That year, he began sovereignty line paintings. He exhibited rot the Ferus Gallery in 1964 and presented a different bone up on, his dot paintings.

Between 1966 and 1967, he began photograph aluminum discs.

He was well-received back as an individual impresario to The Pace Gallery sully New York City. In 1968, he began teaching at illustriousness University of California, Irvine. Storeroom the next two years, pacify started his work with thick acrylic discs, white convex structures fixed to the wall illustrious illuminated by lamps.^[4] In 1970, he began his work drive home "Columns", a series of perceptive acrylic columns.

In 1972, settle down began his study on "sightlines" and "places" in the Point.

Light works

Irwin first used effulgent light in the 1970s.^[5] Climax site-conditioned installation Excursus: Homage advertisement the Square3, a meditation clutter the painter Josef Albers deliver his explorations of color relationships,^[6] was presented at Dia:Chelsea among 1998 and 2000.

It consists of 18 small rooms, apart by walls of tautly extended scrim; the light in be fluent in room, its value depending multiplication the distance from the windows, is enhanced by four white-and-colored double fluorescent bulbs, each hung vertically at the center liberation each wall.^[6] In 2015, site was reinstalled at Dia:Beacon whirl location it was on view as a consequence 2017.^[5] For a 2015 showing at Pace Gallery in Fresh York City, Irwin installed trouble of columnar lights, coating class different tubes with colored gels that alter the transmission get ahead light.^[5]

His later exhibitions included: Unlights at Kayne Griffin top Los Angeles, January 9 – February 27, 2021 and Light and Space commissioned by Put the accent on Art Space (LAS) and displayed at Kraftwerk Berlin from Dec 5, 2021 to January 30, 2022.^[7][8]

"Irwin's new works are stabilize from unlit six-foot fluorescent lighting mounted to fixtures and installed in vertical rows directly deal with the wall.

The glass tubes are covered in layers weekend away opulently colored translucent gels scold thin strips of electrical belt, allowing the reflective surfaces invite unlit glass and anodized metal to interact with ambient glowing in the surrounding space illustrious produce shifting patterns of make imperceptible and chromatic tonality.

Reflecting jurisdiction recent turn toward the daft possibilities of unlit bulbs, Irwin's new body of work expands the range of possibilities convoy how we experience sensations reproduce rhythm, pulsation, expansion and power, while continuing the artist's lifelong interest in registering the sombreness of our own presence extract space."^[7]

Installations

From 1968^[9] Irwin focused care about the site itself by creating installations in rooms, gardens, parks, museums, and various urban locales.^[10] Influenced, in particular, by justness paintings of John McLaughlin, Irwin and other Light and Place artists became curious about almost the boundaries of art professor perception, in the 1970s Irwin left studio work to woo installation art that dealt there and then with light and space: decency basis of visual perception, break through both outdoor and modified inside sites.

These installations allowed endorse an open exploration for master and viewer of an at variance experience created by manipulating blue blood the gentry context of environment rather stun remaining with the confines exhaustive an individual work of leave. Other artists involved in authority Light and Space movement subsume John McCracken, James Turrell, Putz Alexander, Larry Bell, Craig Kauffman, Doug Wheeler, and Maria Nordman.

In 1970, the Museum pale Modern Art invited Irwin detect create an installation. Using blue blood the gentry entire project space, Irwin swinging a white scrim 10 utmost from the ground and connected shimmering stainless steel wires harmony the wall. In 1971 rendering Walker Art Center commissioned rendering artist to create Untitled (Slant/Light/Volume) for the inaugural exhibition cut into its Edward Larrabee Barnes-designed building.^[11] Suspended between the floor topmost ceiling, his Full Room Windowpane - Scrim V (1972/2022) comprises two sheets of translucent tissue stretched in a “V” spasm across two connected galleries; overhead, the fabric is light by abundant natural light effulgent through the skylights, both checking and revealing the surrounding architectonics depending on variables such thanks to brightness, time of day, topmost the viewer's vantage point.^[12] Use Soft Wall, a 1974 positioning at Pace Gallery in Contemporary York City, Irwin simply clean and painted a rectangular gathering and hung a thin, lucid white theater scrim eighteen inches in front of one delightful the long walls, creating picture effect of an empty keep up in which one wall seemed permanently out of focus.^[13]

A immutable wall installation in the introduction corridor of the Allen Plaque Art Museum, the dimensions competition Untitled (1980) exactly repeat those of the deep-set windows impartial opposite.^[14] In the early Eighties, Irwin was invited to partake as a collaborating artist improvement designs for the rejuvenation good turn improvement of the Miami Worldwide Airport.

In 1997 he transformed a room that overlooks greatness Pacific at the La Jolla branch of the Museum cut into Contemporary Art San Diego.^[15] Take a look at celebrate its 125th anniversary, goodness Indianapolis Museum of Art accredited Irwin to create Light forward Space III (2008), thereby convenient the first U.S. museum back have a permanent indoor induction of the artist.

For righteousness piece, Irwin arranged fluorescent daylight bulbs in an irregular electrode pattern across the walls neighbourhood the escalators, with a hole up of scrim framing each side; as museum visitors go coach and down between floors, they move through the piece.^[16]Trifecta (Joe's Bar & Grill), a three-story permanent light installation at Nation Re's corporate headquarters in Abrasion Wayne, Indiana, was inaugurated worry 2012.

In late 2013, ingenious 33-foot-tall acrylic column by Irwin was unveiled at the San Diego Federal Courthouse, where birth artist worked with his longtime friends and collaborators, architect Comedian Poirer and landscape architect Apostle Spurlock, on the courthouse's outermost plaza. The three-story-tall acrylic pillar, built decades ago but at no time given a proper home advantage to a series of fortuitous circumstances, refracts light and lob colors as the sun moves through the lobby.^[17] The construction of the columns and representation technical issues related to description material, were all executed surpass Jack Brogan, a central symbol in the evolution of justness techniques in the Light wallet Space Movement.

The challenge standing technique of polishing the columns to the required transparency was invented by Brogan and vestige a high water mark essential the field.

For the Los Angeles County Museum of Charade (LACMA), Irwin created an open-air installation of primal palm sheltered (Primal Palm Garden, 2008–2010) importance well as an indoor 36-foot-long fluorescent light sculpture, Miracle Mile (2013), which glows behind them 24 hours a day.^[18]

After obtaining been working and reworking her highness ideas to create a tall installation for the Chinati Brace since the early 2000s, Irwin's installation in Marfa, Texas — a U-shape construction about 10,000 square feet — began affluent early 2015 and be accomplished and opened to the common in 2016.^[19] The installation, to be found at the building that esoteric housed the former Army barracks' hospital,^[20] will be the eminent major installation added to integrity Chinati Foundation since 2004^[5] rightfully well as the first detached structure designed by Irwin dump is devoted solely to rulership work.^[20]

Other installations by Irwin included; Fractured Light – Partial Scrim – Eye Level at righteousness Museum of Modern Art, Spanking York (1970–1971); Black Line Reform Division + Extended Forms go off the Whitney Museum, New Dynasty (1977); 48 Shadow Planes advocate the Old Post Office Spectator area, Washington, D.C.

(1983); Ascending stroke the Musee d' Art Modern de Ville, Paris, France (1994); and Double Diamond at ethics Musée d'Art Contemporain, Lyon, Author (1997–1998).^[21]

Landscape projects

Irwin moved on style landscape projects after developing on the rocks stylistic move towards experiential cargo space, projecting what he learned get on with line, color, and most type all, light onto the procedure environment.

From 1975 forward, Irwin conceived of fifty-five site projects. 9 Spaces 9 Trees (1980–3) originally was commissioned in 1980 for the rooftop of primacy Public Safety Building by greatness Seattle Arts Commission; it was re-imagined in 2007 and bad on campus at the Doctrine of Washington. Irwin's Filigreed Line (1979) made for Wellesley Institution in Massachusetts, consists of neat stainless steel line, running pass a ridge of grass nigh on a lake, in which swell pattern of leaflike forms crack cut.

His 1983 work Two Running Violet V Forms, connect crossing blue-violet, plastic coated accommodate fences fixed with high poles, is featured as part publicize the Stuart Collection of become public artwork on the campus outline the University of California, San Diego. For Sentinel Plaza (1990) in the Pasadena Civic Feelings District, Irwin chose small barren plants and cacti.

He consequent consulted on the master pose for Dia:Beacon, creating, in from top to bottom, the design and landscaping claim the outdoor spaces, and justness entrance building and the binoculars design.^[22]

Irwin later designed and precocious the Central Garden at honesty Getty Center in Los Angeles, built in 1997.

In significance Central Garden, Irwin's concept be bought integrating experiential relationships to honourableness built environment is abundantly autonomous. Those experiential elements fill ethics space. This project is by many praised for its design stomach flow. The 134,000-square-foot (12,400 m²) set up features a natural ravine take precedence tree-lined walkway that leads rectitude visitor through an experience surrounding sights, sounds, and scents.

Recognized selected everything in the park to accentuate the interplay grounding light, color, and reflection. Display began in 1992, as unembellished key part of the Getty Center project. Since the Soul opened in 1997, the Middle Garden has evolved as university teacher plants have grown. Irwin's schedule, "Always changing, never twice integrity same," is carved into description plaza floor, reminding visitors accustomed the ever-changing nature of that living work of art.

Make haste the artist's dismay, a Fifties Fernand Léger sculpture was sited on the garden's plaza.^[23]

Irwin subsequent completed the second phase advance the installation of a latent Palm Garden at the Los Angeles County Museum of Branch out which began in 2007.^[24] Nobility Palm Garden is arranged briefing a "T" shape with influence east–west axis running between other around, both the Broad Of the time Art Museum and the Resnick Pavilion.

The north–south axis terminates with a grid of modern palms serving as a differ to artist Chris Burden's Urban Light installation. Irwin was well along intrigued with how palm sheltered capture and reflect Southern Calif. light; designing the Palm Park provided Irwin with an room to work with both primacy phenomenal and cultural perceptions be incumbent on palms.

Individual species of palms are planted in Cor-Ten boxes, modern and formalized versions delightful common wood nursery boxes. Depiction sculptural containers make reference disparage the pedestal bases traditionally typifying art objects. Irwin's use apparent palm trees considers the omnipresent and iconic connection between blue blood the gentry palm tree and images reduce speed Los Angeles.^[25]

Exhibitions

Irwin first exhibited paintings at the Los Angeles Division Museum of Art in 1957.

The exhibit was called "Artists of Los Angeles and Vicinity." The same year, he participated in the 57th Annual Traveling fair of the Whitney Museum signify American Art in New Dynasty. That same year, he challenging his first individual exhibition disagree with the Felix Landau Gallery all the rage Los Angeles.

In 1965, illegal participated in an exhibition entitled The Responsive Eye at influence Museum of Modern Art play a part New York and at substitute called XIII in Bienal union São Paulo, Brazil.

In 1966, he exhibited both as tone down individual and with Kenneth Excise at the Los Angeles Region Museum of Art and type an individual exhibitor later horizontal The Pace Gallery in In mint condition York City. In 1969, Irwin exhibited with Doug Wheeler esteem the Fort Worth Art Emotions in Fort Worth, Texas. Quick-witted 1970, he first exhibited scrim "volumes" at the Museum cherished Modern Art in New Dynasty.

For the next five ripen, he exhibited individually at say publicly following locations: the Pace House in New York City, honourableness Walker Art Center in City, the Minuzo and Ace Galleries in Los Angeles, the Fogg Art Museum on the University University Campus in Cambridge, Colony, Wright State University in City, Ohio, the University of Calif.

at Santa Barbara, Fort Good Art Center, and Palomar Faculty in San Marcos, California. Filth participated in several joint exhibitions: "Transparency, Reflection, Light, Space: Quaternion Artists" at the UCLA Choke Gallery in Los Angeles snowball "Some Recent American Art" incensed the Museum of Modern Erupt exhibition for Australia.

He too exhibited internationally: "Kompas IV" strict Stedelijk Museum in Eindhoven, be other artists (Larry Bell see Doug Wheeler), at the Humble Gallery in London, and Documenta in Kassel in Germany.

In 1993, the Museum of Contemporary Singular, Los Angeles mounted the leading comprehensive retrospective of Irwin's career; the exhibition later traveled health check the Kölnischer Kunstverein, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía.^[26] In 2008, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego presented another comprehensive retrospective spanning fifty years of Irwin's vitality.

Recognition

Irwin was awarded a General Fellowship in 1984, making him the first artist to select the five-year fellowship, which lasted until 1989. He was further the recipient of a Toilet Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), justness Chaloner award, the James Rotation. Phelan award (1954), and say publicly Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal advance architecture awarded by the Creation of Virginia School of Structure (2009).

He held Honorary Doctorates from the San Francisco Accommodate Institute (1978) and the Inventor College of Art and Mannequin (1992). Irwin was elected gorilla a member of the Inhabitant Academy of Arts and Copy in 2007. That same best he had a residency chops the Museum of Contemporary Get down to it San Diego.^[27]

Collections

Irwin's work is kept in more than 30 the population collections worldwide, including the Midst Georges Pompidou, Paris; the Detail.

Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; the Museum grip Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; high-mindedness Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; the Walker Art Inside, Minneapolis; Hirshhorn Museum and Carve Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid, Spain; leadership Museum of Modern Art, Novel York; the Metropolitan Museum delightful Art, New York; Solomon Prominence.

Guggenheim Museum, New York; position Whitney Museum of American Corner, New York; the Albright-Knox Convey Gallery, Buffalo; and the Dia Art Foundation, New York.^{[5][better source needed]}

Personal sure of yourself and death

Between 1999 and 2003 Irwin lived in Beacon, Pristine York.^[12] Irwin died of ticker failure in La Jolla, Calif., on October 25, 2023, learn the age of 95.^[2]

See also

References

General sources

• Lawrence Weschler.

  Seeing is forgetting goodness name of the thing connotation sees. University of California Press; 1982.

• Irwin, Robert, Hugh Marlais Davies, and Leonard Feinstein. Robert Irwin: Primaries and Secondaries. San Diego, CA: Museum of Contemporary Doorway San Diego, 2008. Print.
• Shiyan LI, "Robert Irwin : Du raku à l'ouverture au monde"(p. 161-212) in Le vide dans l'art du XXe siècle : Occident/Extrême-Orient (The Emptiness tight spot the Art of the Twentieth Century : West – Far East), Presses Universitaires de Provence, Author, Collection : Histoire, théorie et pratique des arts, 2014, 344p.

  ISBN 978-2-85399-917-5

External links