Robert Irwin (artist)
Encyclopedia
Robert Irwin is an American
Installation artist. He lives and works in San Diego, California.
to Robert Irwin and Goldie Anderberg Irwin. After serving in the United States Army from 1946 to 1947, he attended several art institutes: Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1948 to 1950, Jepson Art Institute
in 1951, and Chouinard Art Institute
in Los Angeles from 1952 to 1954. He spent the next two years living in Europe and North Africa. Between the years 1957-1958, he taught at the Chouinard Art Institute
.
“I began as a painter in the middle of nowhere with few questions… My first real question concerned the arbitrariness of my paintings… I used my paintings as a step-by-step process, each new series of works acting in direct response to those questions raised by the previous series. I first questioned the mark as meaning and then even as focus; I then questioned the frame as containment, the edge as the beginning and end of what I see… consider the possibility that nothing ever really transcends its immediate environment… I tried to respond directly to the quality of each situation I was in, not to change it wholesale into a new or ideal environment, but to attend directly to the nature of how it already was. How is it that a space could ever come to be considered empty when it is filled with real and tactile events?” (Robert Irwin, 1977)
Robert Irwin’s notion of art derived from a series of experiential perceptions. As an abstract, open-minded thinker, he presented experience first as perception or sense. He concluded that a sense of knowing, or ability to identify, helped to clarify perception. For example,
“We know the sky’s blueness even before we know it as “blue”, let alone as “sky.”
He explained later that the conception of an abstract thought occurs in the mind, through the concept of self. Following, the physical form is then recognized, communicating the form to the community. Then, the Objective compound occurs, delineating behavioral norms and artistic norms, becoming identifiable. Then the boundaries and axioms introduce logic and reasoning and decisions can be made: either inductive or deductive. Formalism follows, proving and convincing a decision about the object being perceived. The study done by Irwin suggested that:
“…all ideas and values have their roots in experience,… they can be held separate at any point and developed directly on the grounds of function and use, both that they in fact remain relative to the condition of both our subjective and objective being.”
Robert Irwin’s philosophy defined his idea of art as a series of aesthetic inquiries, an opportunity for cultural innovation, a communicative interaction with society, and as compounded historical development.
In his book Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, Lawrence Weschler
documents Irwin’s process from his early days as a youngster in Southern California
to his emergence as a leader in the post-abstraction art world. Weschler describes the mystifying and often enchanting quality of these works in his book’s cover notes:
Because of the ephemeral or subtle nature of his work, this book became not just an introduction but, for many artists and art students, the primary way that Robert Irwin's work was experienced. He told Jori Finkel of the New York Times in 2007 that people still come up to him at lectures for book autographs. In that article, Michael Govan, the director of LACMA who previously commissioned Irwin to “design our experience” of Dia:Beacon" said he believes the book “has convinced more young people to become artists than the Velvet Underground has created rockers.”
in Los Angeles. The following year, 1960, he was asked to exhibit there again as well as at the Pasadena Art Museum. By that time he began a continuous series of experiments. In 1962, he began teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles
and exhibited at the Ferus Gallery again. That year, he began his line paintings. He exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in 1964 and presented a different study, his dot paintings.
Between the years 1966-1967, he began painting aluminum discs. He was invited back as an individual exhibitor to The Pace Gallery in New York. In 1968, he began teaching at the University of California at Irvine. For the next two years, he started his work with clear acrylic discs, white convex structures fixed to the wall and illuminated by lamps. In 1970, he began his work on “Columns”, a series of clear acrylic columns. In 1972, he began his study on “sightlines” and “places” in the Southwest.
, Irwin and other Light and Space
artists became curious about pushing the boundaries of art and perception, in the 1970s Robert Irwin left studio work to pursue installation art
that dealt directly with light and space: the basis of visual perception
, in both outdoor and modified interior sites. These installations allowed for an open exploration for artist and viewer of an altered experience created by manipulating the context of environment rather than remaining with the confines of an individual work of art. Other artists involved in the Light and Space movement include John McCracken
, James Turrell
, Peter Alexander
, Larry Bell
, Craig Kauffman, Maria Nordman, and others.
In 1970, the Museum of Modern Art
invited Irwin to create an installation. Using the entire project space, Irwin suspended a white scrim 10 feet from the ground and attached shimmering stainless steel wires to the wall. In 1971 the Walker Art Center
commissioned the artist to create Untitled (Slant/Light/Volume) for the inaugural exhibition of its Edward Larrabee Barnes
-designed building. For Soft Wall, a 1974 installation at Pace Gallery in New York, Irwin simply cleaned and painted a rectangular gallery and hung a thin, translucent white theater scrim eighteen inches in front of one of the long walls, creating the effect of an empty room in which one wall seemed permanently out of focus. A permanent wall installation in the entrance corridor of the Allen Memorial Art Museum
, the dimensions of Untitled (1980) exactly repeat those of the deep-set windows just opposite. In the early 1980s, Irwin was invited to participate as a collaborating artist in designs for the rejuvenation and improvement of the Miami International Airport
. In 1997 he transformed a room that overlooks the Pacific at the La Jolla branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
. To celebrate its 125th anniversary, the Indianapolis Museum of Art
commissioned Irwin to create Light and Space III (2008), thereby becaming the first American museum to have a permanent indoor installation of the artist. For the piece, Irwin arranged fluorescent light bulbs in an irregular grid pattern across the walls surrounding the escalators, with a veil of scrim framing each side; as museum visitors go up and down between floors, they move through the piece.
Other installations include: Fractured Light – Partial Scrim – Eye Level at the Museum of Modern Art
, New York (1970-1971); Black Line Room Division + Extended Forms at the Whitney Museum, New York (1977); 48 Shadow Planes at the Old Post Office, Washington, D.C. (1983); Ascending at the Musee d’ Art Moderne de Ville, Paris, France (1994); and Double Diamond' at the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France (1997-1998).
. Irwin's Filigreed Line (1979) made for Wellesley College, Massachusetts, consists of a stainless steel line, running along a ridge of grass near a lake, in which a pattern of leaflike forms is cut. His 1983 work Two Running Violet V Forms, two crossing blue-violet, plastic coated wire fences fixed with high poles, is featured as part of the Stuart Collection
of public artwork on the campus of the University of California, San Diego
. For Sentinel Plaza (1990) in Pasadena, California, Irwin chose small desert plants and cacti. He later consulted on the master plan for Dia:Beacon
, creating, in particular, the design and landscaping of the outdoor spaces, and the entrance building and the window design.
He later designed and developed the Central Garden at the Getty Center
in Los Angeles, built in 1997. In the Central Garden, Irwin’s concept of integrating experiential relationships to the built environment is abundantly clear. Those experiential elements fill the space. This project is widely praised for its design and flow. The 134000 square feet (12,449 m²) design features a natural ravine and tree-lined walkway that leads the visitor through an experience of sights, sounds, and scents. He selected everything in the garden to accentuate the interplay of light, color, and reflection. Planning began in 1992, as a key part of the Getty Center
project. Since the Center opened in 1997, the Central Garden has evolved as its plants have grown. Irwin's statement, "Always changing, never twice the same," is carved into the plaza floor, reminding visitors of the ever-changing nature of this living work of art. To the artist's dismay, a 1950s Fernand Léger
sculpture was placed on the garden's plaza.
Irwin recently completed the second phase of the installation of a primordial Palm Garden at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art which began in 2007.
in 1957. The exhibit was called “Artists of Los Angeles and Vicinity.” That same year, he participated in the 57th Annual Exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art
, in New York. That same year, he had his first individual exhibition at the Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles.
In 1965, he participated in an exhibition called The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at another called XIII in Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil. In 1966, he exhibited both as an individual and with Kenneth Price at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and as an individual exhibitor later at The Pace Gallery in New York. In 1969, Irwin exhibited with Doug Wheeler at the Fort Worth Art Center
in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1970, he first exhibited scrim “volumes” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For the next five years, he exhibited individually at the following locations: the Pace Gallery in New York, the Walker Art Center
in Minneapolis, the Minuzo and Ace Galleries in Los Angeles, the Fogg Art Museum
on the Harvard Campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wright State University
in Dayton, Ohio, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Fort Worth Art Center, and Palomar College
in San Marcos, California. He participated in several joint exhibitions: “Transparency, Reflection, Light, Space: Four Artists” at the UCLA Art Gallery in Los Angeles and “Some Recent American Art” at the Museum of Modern Art exhibition for Australia. He also exhibited internationally: “Kompas IV” at Stedelijk Museum
in Eindhoven, with other artists, Bell and Wheeler, at the Tate Gallery
in London, and Documenta
at Kassel in Germany.
In 1993, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
mounted the first comprehensive retrospective of Irwin's career; the exhibition later traveled to the Kölnischer Kunstverein, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
. In 2008, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
presented another comprehensive retrospective spanning fifty years of Irwin's career.
Irwin has been represented by The Pace Gallery
, New York, since 1966.
(1954), and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in architecture awarded by the University of Virginia School of Architecture
(2009). He holds Honorary Doctorates from the San Francisco Art Institute
(1979) and the Otis College of Art and Design
(1992). Irwin was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2007. That same year he had a residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
.
, Paris; the J. Paul Getty Museum
, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
, Madrid, Spain; the Museum of Modern Art
, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art
, New York.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Installation artist. He lives and works in San Diego, California.
Beginnings
Robert Irwin was born in 1928 in Long Beach, CaliforniaLong Beach, California
Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California. As of 2010, its population was 462,257...
to Robert Irwin and Goldie Anderberg Irwin. After serving in the United States Army from 1946 to 1947, he attended several art institutes: Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles from 1948 to 1950, Jepson Art Institute
Jepson Art Institute
Jepson Art Institute, founded in Los Angeles in 1945 by artist Herbert Jepson, was an art school located at 2861 West 7th Street that flourished from 1947 to 1953 - becoming an important center for experimental figure drawing, art theory and printmaking. Prior to this, Jepson served as an...
in 1951, and Chouinard Art Institute
Chouinard Art Institute
The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .-Founder:...
in Los Angeles from 1952 to 1954. He spent the next two years living in Europe and North Africa. Between the years 1957-1958, he taught at the Chouinard Art Institute
Chouinard Art Institute
The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .-Founder:...
.
Work
In 1977, Robert Irwin wrote the following about himself:“I began as a painter in the middle of nowhere with few questions… My first real question concerned the arbitrariness of my paintings… I used my paintings as a step-by-step process, each new series of works acting in direct response to those questions raised by the previous series. I first questioned the mark as meaning and then even as focus; I then questioned the frame as containment, the edge as the beginning and end of what I see… consider the possibility that nothing ever really transcends its immediate environment… I tried to respond directly to the quality of each situation I was in, not to change it wholesale into a new or ideal environment, but to attend directly to the nature of how it already was. How is it that a space could ever come to be considered empty when it is filled with real and tactile events?” (Robert Irwin, 1977)
Robert Irwin’s notion of art derived from a series of experiential perceptions. As an abstract, open-minded thinker, he presented experience first as perception or sense. He concluded that a sense of knowing, or ability to identify, helped to clarify perception. For example,
“We know the sky’s blueness even before we know it as “blue”, let alone as “sky.”
He explained later that the conception of an abstract thought occurs in the mind, through the concept of self. Following, the physical form is then recognized, communicating the form to the community. Then, the Objective compound occurs, delineating behavioral norms and artistic norms, becoming identifiable. Then the boundaries and axioms introduce logic and reasoning and decisions can be made: either inductive or deductive. Formalism follows, proving and convincing a decision about the object being perceived. The study done by Irwin suggested that:
“…all ideas and values have their roots in experience,… they can be held separate at any point and developed directly on the grounds of function and use, both that they in fact remain relative to the condition of both our subjective and objective being.”
Robert Irwin’s philosophy defined his idea of art as a series of aesthetic inquiries, an opportunity for cultural innovation, a communicative interaction with society, and as compounded historical development.
In his book Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, Lawrence Weschler
Lawrence Weschler
Lawrence Weschler is an author of works of creative nonfiction.A graduate of Cowell College of the University of California, Santa Cruz , Weschler was for over twenty years a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies...
documents Irwin’s process from his early days as a youngster in Southern California
Southern California
Southern California is a megaregion, or megapolitan area, in the southern area of the U.S. state of California. Large urban areas include Greater Los Angeles and Greater San Diego. The urban area stretches along the coast from Ventura through the Southland and Inland Empire to San Diego...
to his emergence as a leader in the post-abstraction art world. Weschler describes the mystifying and often enchanting quality of these works in his book’s cover notes:
- In May 1980, Robert Irwin returned to Market Street in Venice, California to the block where he had kept a studio until 1970, the year he abandoned studio work altogether. Melinda Wyatt was opening a gallery in the building next door to his former work space and invited Irwin to create an installation.
- He cleaned out the large rectangular room, adjusted the skylights, painted the walls an even white, and then knocked out the wall facing the street, replacing it with a sheer, semi-transparent white scrim. The room seemed to change its aspect with the passing day: people came and sat on the opposite curb, watching, sometimes for hours at time.
- The piece was up for two weeks in one of the more derelict beachfront neighborhoods of Los Angeles: no one so much as laid a hand on it.
Because of the ephemeral or subtle nature of his work, this book became not just an introduction but, for many artists and art students, the primary way that Robert Irwin's work was experienced. He told Jori Finkel of the New York Times in 2007 that people still come up to him at lectures for book autographs. In that article, Michael Govan, the director of LACMA who previously commissioned Irwin to “design our experience” of Dia:Beacon" said he believes the book “has convinced more young people to become artists than the Velvet Underground has created rockers.”
Painting
Irwin's early work began with painting. In 1959, he painted a series of hand-held objects and exhibited for the second time, as an individual exhibitor, at the Ferus GalleryFerus Gallery
The Ferus Gallery was a contemporary art gallery operating from 1957-1966. In 1957 it was located at 736-A North La Cienega Boulevard, Los Angeles, California...
in Los Angeles. The following year, 1960, he was asked to exhibit there again as well as at the Pasadena Art Museum. By that time he began a continuous series of experiments. In 1962, he began teaching at the University of California, Los Angeles
University of California, Los Angeles
The University of California, Los Angeles is a public research university located in the Westwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, USA. It was founded in 1919 as the "Southern Branch" of the University of California and is the second oldest of the ten campuses...
and exhibited at the Ferus Gallery again. That year, he began his line paintings. He exhibited at the Ferus Gallery in 1964 and presented a different study, his dot paintings.
Between the years 1966-1967, he began painting aluminum discs. He was invited back as an individual exhibitor to The Pace Gallery in New York. In 1968, he began teaching at the University of California at Irvine. For the next two years, he started his work with clear acrylic discs, white convex structures fixed to the wall and illuminated by lamps. In 1970, he began his work on “Columns”, a series of clear acrylic columns. In 1972, he began his study on “sightlines” and “places” in the Southwest.
Installations
Since 1968 Irwin has focused on the site itself by creating installations in rooms, gardens, parks, museums, and various urban locales. Influenced, in particular, by the paintings of John McLaughlinJohn McLaughlin (artist)
John Dwyer McLaughlin was an American abstract painter. Based primarily in California, he was a pioneer in minimalist and hard-edge painting.-Life:...
, Irwin and other Light and Space
Light and Space
Light and Space denotes an art movement related to op art, minimalism and geometric abstraction originating in Southern California in the 1960s and influenced by John McLaughlin...
artists became curious about pushing the boundaries of art and perception, in the 1970s Robert Irwin left studio work to pursue installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
that dealt directly with light and space: the basis of visual perception
Visual perception
Visual perception is the ability to interpret information and surroundings from the effects of visible light reaching the eye. The resulting perception is also known as eyesight, sight, or vision...
, in both outdoor and modified interior sites. These installations allowed for an open exploration for artist and viewer of an altered experience created by manipulating the context of environment rather than remaining with the confines of an individual work of art. Other artists involved in the Light and Space movement include John McCracken
John McCracken
John Harvey McCracken was a contemporary artist who lived and worked in Santa Fe, New Mexico and New York.- Education/teaching :...
, James Turrell
James Turrell
James Turrell is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Turrell was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984. He is represented by The Pace Gallery in New York...
, Peter Alexander
Peter Alexander (artist)
Peter Alexander is an American artist. A member of the Light and Space artistic movement in southern California in the 1960s, he is best known for his resin sculptures from the 1960s and 1970s.-Biography:...
, Larry Bell
Larry Bell (artist)
Larry Bell is a contemporary American artist and sculptor. He lives and works in Taos, New Mexico, and maintains a studio in Venice, California. From 1957 to 1959 he studied at the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles as a student of Robert Irwin, Richards Ruben, Robert Chuey, and Emerson Woelfer...
, Craig Kauffman, Maria Nordman, and others.
In 1970, the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
invited Irwin to create an installation. Using the entire project space, Irwin suspended a white scrim 10 feet from the ground and attached shimmering stainless steel wires to the wall. In 1971 the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
commissioned the artist to create Untitled (Slant/Light/Volume) for the inaugural exhibition of its Edward Larrabee Barnes
Edward Larrabee Barnes
Edward Larrabee Barnes was a American architect.Barnes was born in Chicago, Illinois into a family he described as "incense-swinging High Episcopalians", consisting of Cecil Barnes, a lawyer, and Margaret Helen Ayer, recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for the novel Year of Grace...
-designed building. For Soft Wall, a 1974 installation at Pace Gallery in New York, Irwin simply cleaned and painted a rectangular gallery and hung a thin, translucent white theater scrim eighteen inches in front of one of the long walls, creating the effect of an empty room in which one wall seemed permanently out of focus. A permanent wall installation in the entrance corridor of the Allen Memorial Art Museum
Allen Memorial Art Museum
The Allen Memorial Art Museum is located in Oberlin, Ohio and is run by Oberlin College. Founded in 1917, its collection is one of the finest of any college or university museum in the United States, consistently ranking among those of Harvard and Yale...
, the dimensions of Untitled (1980) exactly repeat those of the deep-set windows just opposite. In the early 1980s, Irwin was invited to participate as a collaborating artist in designs for the rejuvenation and improvement of the Miami International Airport
Miami International Airport
Miami International Airport , also known as MIA and historically Wilcox Field, is the primary airport serving the South Florida area...
. In 1997 he transformed a room that overlooks the Pacific at the La Jolla branch of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego , in San Diego, California, USA, is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present.-History:...
. To celebrate its 125th anniversary, the Indianapolis Museum of Art
Indianapolis Museum of Art
The Indianapolis Museum of Art is an encyclopedic art museum located in Indianapolis, Indiana, United States. The museum, which underwent a $74 million expansion in 2005, is located on a campus on the near northwest area outside downtown Indianapolis, northwest of Crown Hill Cemetery.The...
commissioned Irwin to create Light and Space III (2008), thereby becaming the first American museum to have a permanent indoor installation of the artist. For the piece, Irwin arranged fluorescent light bulbs in an irregular grid pattern across the walls surrounding the escalators, with a veil of scrim framing each side; as museum visitors go up and down between floors, they move through the piece.
Other installations include: Fractured Light – Partial Scrim – Eye Level at the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York (1970-1971); Black Line Room Division + Extended Forms at the Whitney Museum, New York (1977); 48 Shadow Planes at the Old Post Office, Washington, D.C. (1983); Ascending at the Musee d’ Art Moderne de Ville, Paris, France (1994); and Double Diamond' at the Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, France (1997-1998).
Landscape projects
Irwin moved on to landscape projects after developing a stylistic move towards experiential space, projecting what he learned about line, color, and most of all, light onto the built environment. Since 1975 Irwin has conceived of fifty-five site projects. 9 Spaces 9 Trees (1980–3) was originally commissioned in 1980 for the rooftop of the Public Safety Building by the Seattle Arts Commission; it was re-imagined in 2007 and sited on campus at the University of WashingtonUniversity of Washington
University of Washington is a public research university, founded in 1861 in Seattle, Washington, United States. The UW is the largest university in the Northwest and the oldest public university on the West Coast. The university has three campuses, with its largest campus in the University...
. Irwin's Filigreed Line (1979) made for Wellesley College, Massachusetts, consists of a stainless steel line, running along a ridge of grass near a lake, in which a pattern of leaflike forms is cut. His 1983 work Two Running Violet V Forms, two crossing blue-violet, plastic coated wire fences fixed with high poles, is featured as part of the Stuart Collection
Stuart Collection
The Stuart Collection is a collection of public art on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. Founded in 1983, the Stuart Collection's goal is to spread commissioned sculpture throughout the campus, including both traditional sculptures and integration with features of the campus...
of public artwork on the campus of the University of California, San Diego
University of California, San Diego
The University of California, San Diego, commonly known as UCSD or UC San Diego, is a public research university located in the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, United States...
. For Sentinel Plaza (1990) in Pasadena, California, Irwin chose small desert plants and cacti. He later consulted on the master plan for Dia:Beacon
Dia:Beacon
Dia:Beacon, Riggio Galleries is the museum for the Dia Art Foundation's collection of art from the 1960s to the present. The museum, which opened in 2003, is situated on the banks of the Hudson River in Beacon, New York. Dia:Beacon occupies a former Nabisco box-printing facility that was renovated...
, creating, in particular, the design and landscaping of the outdoor spaces, and the entrance building and the window design.
He later designed and developed the Central Garden at the Getty Center
Getty Center
The Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997, is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles...
in Los Angeles, built in 1997. In the Central Garden, Irwin’s concept of integrating experiential relationships to the built environment is abundantly clear. Those experiential elements fill the space. This project is widely praised for its design and flow. The 134000 square feet (12,449 m²) design features a natural ravine and tree-lined walkway that leads the visitor through an experience of sights, sounds, and scents. He selected everything in the garden to accentuate the interplay of light, color, and reflection. Planning began in 1992, as a key part of the Getty Center
Getty Center
The Getty Center, in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California, is a campus for cultural institutions founded by oilman J. Paul Getty. The $1.3 billion center, which opened on December 16, 1997, is also well known for its architecture, gardens, and views overlooking Los Angeles...
project. Since the Center opened in 1997, the Central Garden has evolved as its plants have grown. Irwin's statement, "Always changing, never twice the same," is carved into the plaza floor, reminding visitors of the ever-changing nature of this living work of art. To the artist's dismay, a 1950s Fernand Léger
Fernand Léger
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...
sculpture was placed on the garden's plaza.
Irwin recently completed the second phase of the installation of a primordial Palm Garden at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art which began in 2007.
Exhibitions
Irwin first exhibited paintings at the Los Angeles County Museum of ArtLos Angeles County Museum of Art
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art is an art museum in Los Angeles, California. It is located on Wilshire Boulevard along Museum Row in the Miracle Mile vicinity of Los Angeles, adjacent to the George C. Page Museum and La Brea Tar Pits....
in 1957. The exhibit was called “Artists of Los Angeles and Vicinity.” That same year, he participated in the 57th Annual Exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, in New York. That same year, he had his first individual exhibition at the Felix Landau Gallery in Los Angeles.
In 1965, he participated in an exhibition called The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and at another called XIII in Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil. In 1966, he exhibited both as an individual and with Kenneth Price at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and as an individual exhibitor later at The Pace Gallery in New York. In 1969, Irwin exhibited with Doug Wheeler at the Fort Worth Art Center
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth was first granted a Charter from the State of Texas in 1892 as the "Fort Worth Public Library and Art Gallery", evolving through several name changes and different facilities in Fort Worth...
in Fort Worth, Texas. In 1970, he first exhibited scrim “volumes” at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. For the next five years, he exhibited individually at the following locations: the Pace Gallery in New York, the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...
in Minneapolis, the Minuzo and Ace Galleries in Los Angeles, the Fogg Art Museum
Fogg Art Museum
The Fogg Museum, opened to the public in 1896, is the oldest of Harvard University's art museums. The Fogg joins the Busch-Reisinger Museum and the Arthur M. Sackler Museum as part of the Harvard Art Museums....
on the Harvard Campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Wright State University
Wright State University
Wright State University is a comprehensive public university with strong doctoral, research, and undergraduate programs, rated among the 260 Best National Universities listed in the annual "America's Best Colleges" rankings by U.S. News and World Report. Wright State is located in Fairborn, Ohio,...
in Dayton, Ohio, the University of California at Santa Barbara, Fort Worth Art Center, and Palomar College
Palomar College
Palomar College is a community college with one campus and six education sites in San Diego County, California. The main campus is located in San Marcos, while the six education sites are located elsewhere throughout north San Diego County. The largest of these is the education center located in...
in San Marcos, California. He participated in several joint exhibitions: “Transparency, Reflection, Light, Space: Four Artists” at the UCLA Art Gallery in Los Angeles and “Some Recent American Art” at the Museum of Modern Art exhibition for Australia. He also exhibited internationally: “Kompas IV” at Stedelijk Museum
Stedelijk Museum
Founded in 1874, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam is a museum for classic modern and contemporary art in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. It has been housed on the Paulus Potterstraat, next to Museum Square Museumplein and to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh Museum and the Concertgebouw, in Amsterdam Zuid...
in Eindhoven, with other artists, Bell and Wheeler, at the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in London, and Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
at Kassel in Germany.
In 1993, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles is a contemporary art museum with three locations in greater Los Angeles, California. The main branch is located on Grand Avenue in Downtown Los Angeles, near Walt Disney Concert Hall...
mounted the first comprehensive retrospective of Irwin's career; the exhibition later traveled to the Kölnischer Kunstverein, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris is the City of Paris Museum of Modern Art dedicated to the arts of the 20th/21st centuries. It is located at 11 Avenue du Président Wilson in the 16th arrondissement of Paris.-Description:...
, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is the official name of Spain's national museum of 20th century art . The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofia of Spain...
. In 2008, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego , in San Diego, California, USA, is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present.-History:...
presented another comprehensive retrospective spanning fifty years of Irwin's career.
Irwin has been represented by The Pace Gallery
Pace Gallery
The Pace Gallery is a New York City-based exhibition space. It was founded in 1960 in Boston by Arne Glimcher.-PaceWildenstein:From 1993 until April 1, 2010, the gallery became "PaceWildenstein," a joint business venture between the Pace Gallery and Wildenstein & Co....
, New York, since 1966.
Recognition
Irwin was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1984, thereby becaming the first artist to receive the five-year fellowship, which lasted until 1989. He has also been the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), the Chaloner award, the James D. Phelan awardJames Duval Phelan Award
The James D. Phelan Award is a literary award offered annually to promising young California writers. The award is sponsored by and administered by Intersection for the Arts....
(1954), and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation medal in architecture awarded by the University of Virginia School of Architecture
University of Virginia School of Architecture
The School of Architecture at the University of Virginia is a national leader in architectural education, conferring degrees in Architecture, Landscape Architecture, Architectural History, and Urban and Environmental Planning...
(2009). He holds Honorary Doctorates from the San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute
San Francisco Art Institute is a school of higher education in contemporary art with the main campus in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California. Its graduate center is in the Dogpatch neighborhood. The private, non-profit institution is accredited by WASC and is a member of the...
(1979) and the Otis College of Art and Design
Otis College of Art and Design
Otis College of Art and Design is an art and design college in Los Angeles, California.The school's programs, accredited by WASC and National Association of Schools of Art and Design, include four-year BFA degrees in illustration, fine arts, graphic design, architecture, landscape design, interior...
(1992). Irwin was elected as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2007. That same year he had a residency at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego
The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego , in San Diego, California, USA, is an art museum focused on the collection, preservation, exhibition, and interpretation of works of art from 1950 to the present.-History:...
.
Collections
Irwin's work is held in more than thirty public collections worldwide, including the Centre Georges PompidouCentre Georges Pompidou
Centre Georges Pompidou is a complex in the Beaubourg area of the 4th arrondissement of Paris, near Les Halles, rue Montorgueil and the Marais...
, Paris; the J. Paul Getty Museum
J. Paul Getty Museum
The J. Paul Getty Museum, a program of the J. Paul Getty Trust, is an art museum. It has two locations, one at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, and one at the Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California...
, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden
The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall, in Washington, D.C., the United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and is part of the...
, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia
Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía
The Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía is the official name of Spain's national museum of 20th century art . The museum was officially inaugurated on September 10, 1992 and is named for Queen Sofia of Spain...
, Madrid, Spain; the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...
, New York; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, often referred to simply as "the Whitney", is an art museum with a focus on 20th- and 21st-century American art. Located at 945 Madison Avenue at 75th Street in New York City, the Whitney's permanent collection contains more than 18,000 works in a wide variety of...
, New York.
Literature
- Lawrence WeschlerLawrence WeschlerLawrence Weschler is an author of works of creative nonfiction.A graduate of Cowell College of the University of California, Santa Cruz , Weschler was for over twenty years a staff writer at The New Yorker, where his work shuttled between political tragedies and cultural comedies...
. Seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one 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 Art San Diego, 2008. Print.
External links
- The Pace Gallery
- President's lecture: Irwin lecture at Rice University in 2000
- UCSD Russell Lecturer: Robert Irwin lecture at MCASD La Jolla (2008)
- "Artist of Space, Light and Now Trees" by Jori Finkel. New York Times article of October 24, 2007
- Daily Gusto review of Weschler's bio of Robert Irwin
- Robert Irwin papers, 1970-2003. Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. Los Angeles, California. The Robert Irwin papers are composed of correspondence, personal writings, clippings, and audio and visual tapes, as well as project files, photographs, drawings and models pertaining to his light and space and environmental works. The material dates from 1970, the year he sold the contents of his Venice, California studio, to 1996.