Robert Irwin

Seeing is Forgetting the name of the thing one sees

Lawrence Weschler, Uni of California Press 1982

Came to understand that a good painting is one in which the shapes interact, there’s ‘a pure energy build-up’.  For him it went flat as soon as it started to have any relationship to nature, to recognizable forms. Representation was a second order of reality; ‘I was after a first order of presence.’  Maximise the energy, minimize the imagery.  Happens on a perceptual, tactile level. ‘All my work since then has been an exploration of phenomenal presence.’

This began a line of enquiry that led first to massive simplification – 2 line paintings (10 over 2 years of very intense activity). In these he relied on direct experience, honed during an 8 month solitary period on Ibiza, of his feelings and thoughts rather than on aesthetic standards.  With each painting he went deeper into the physical, perceptual relationships within it.  LW draws a parallel with Kierkegaard’s existentialism and quotes from him ’The more you limit yourself, the more fertile you become in invention.’  They became his whole life. The painting as an intimate dialogue with himself.  Saw how a minute change in the position of a line could change the whole perceptual field.  Didn’t want to fall into geometry which would have imposed its own logic; wanted his own human presence to be evident. Responded to the world of the evolving painting as presented.  Eventually the later of these paintings came to express the key issues in life such as being-in-time, space, presence. Wants the viewer to stop trying to ‘read’ the painting and just experience it perceptually; then time and space seem to blend and ‘You finally end up in a totally meditative state. . . where nothing else is going on but the tactile, experiential process.’ You can’t recall these works; they only work when you are actually looking at them when they offer ‘ a rich floating sense of energy’.

Moved on to a series of spot paintings in which he was exploring how to diminish the effects of their edge by giving them a convex centre (so that the edges seemed to recede, fade into the wall). A hypnotic effect; the viewer has to slow right down to literally see the painting.  Continued this concern with the disc paintings; no longer felt comfortable with the edge’s confinement.  Very experiential process.  Looking to create painting ‘that starts to take in and become involved with the space or environment around it.’  After months of research and experimentation he started to hit on the combination of the disc form, lighting and shadow; centre of the convex disc (eliminates 4 corners) was painted same colour as wall so it appeared to float, with diffuse clours round edge. When correctly lit, the edges ‘seemed to phase into their own shadows.’  But had to pay meticulous attention to the lighting, and often pieces came to be displayed in conditions over which he had no control.

Untitled 1968

Next step was realizing that the environment was equal to the painting in meaning.  Began to be interested in ‘the incidental, the peripheral, the transitory’ in our experience, what is on the edge of our focused perception, awareness. Experimented e.g with off-centre transparent columns.

Collaboration with James Turrell and scientist Ed Wortz.  Collectively worked out some primary concerns which were to become more evident in his work: raising consciousness about perception, art as a realm of experience/ frame of mind, perception as the media for art, the artist defining what is art as that which hasn’t yet been experienced enough. Became fascinated with anechoic chambers, fields without objects of perception. Saw how artists and scientists worked in similar ways, from hypothesis, but the artist uses intuition/feeling/him/herself and the scientist uses an external logical process.  Inquiry.

The room at MOMA 1970 arose out of understanding that no single object could be isolated as art; what was interesting to him were the ‘multiple interactive relations’. ‘. . .nothing can exist in the world independent of all the other things in the world.’ Possible to see ‘the world as a kind of continuum’ for post abstract-expressionist artists.  With the awkward MOMA space “Instead of my overlaying my ideas onto that space, that space overlaid itself onto me.”  Subtle use of wire, scrim and lighting: could the viewer work out whether this was even deliberate, let alone art? Had no effect on the art world, but lots on him.

This piece was a huge turning point.  Felt he’d dismantled himself, and so he dismantled his studio and possessions and let himself drift, drive through the desert.  Connected with experiences of ‘presence’ in this world. Couldn’t do anything obvious with these, but he applied this idea of presence to the rooms he worked with over the coming years.

His themes now clear: perception and presence.

Lot of use of scrim in his rooms with ‘its capacity to give shape, as it were, to light’ by virtue of being not quite transparent, seeming to capture light in its interstices. He worked in a UCLA stairwell because he was drawn by the presence created by reflected light that changed through the day, making subtle structural changes. In an exhibition at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art he completely changed a room by the addition of one strip of black tape; some thought the tape was the work.

Moved outside but what he created – a black square at an intersection of two roads – was no less interesting to him than phenomena of light and shadow created all over the city. “That the light strikes a certain wall at a particular time of day in a particular way and it’s beautiful, that, as far as I am concerned, now fits all my criteria for art.”  Aesthetic perception is itself the pure subject of art. ‘Art existed not in objects but in a way of seeing.’  He felt like he was on a trapeze swinging in the dark, and that he would need to let go.

But he didn’t.  Drawn back to the world.  Pitched for a lot of outdoor commissions, site-generated as opposed to site-specific; a few were realized. Line, object, permanence crept back in but now he was clear that his goal was presence – none of these things could be metaphorical.  His own perception of the world has changed.  His work was elusive at this time to most people and he stood accused of being too idealistic, theoretical. His understanding has taken him beyond what he can accomplish.

“All I try to do for people is to reinvoke the sheer wonder that they perceive anything at all.”