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Robert Watts (artist)
Encyclopedia
Robert Watts was an American artist best known for his work as a member of the international Avant-garde
art movement Fluxus
. Born in Burlington, Iowa
June 14, 1923, he became Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University
, New Jersey in 1953, a post he kept until 1984. In the 1950s, he was in close contact with other teachers at Rutgers including Allan Kaprow
, Geoffrey Hendricks
and Roy Lichtenstein
. This has led some critics to claim that pop art
and conceptual art
began at Rutgers.
He organised the proto-fluxus Yam Festival, May 1963 with George Brecht
, and was one of the main protagonists, along with George Maciunas
, in turning SoHo
, New York, into an artist's quarter. He died Friday September 2, 1988 of lung cancer in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania
.
He was also known as Bob Watts or Doctor Bob.
After earning a degree in mechanical engineering
at the University of Louisville
, Watts served as an officer in the United States Navy aboard aircraft carriers. Watts left the Navy and moved to New York in 1948, where he studied art at the Art Students League and later at Columbia University
from where he gained a degree in the History of Art, majoring in pre-Columbian and non-Western Art. After becaming Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, 1953, he started to exhibit works in a proto-pop style. He participated in Pop Art shows such as New Forms, New Media exhibition in 1960 at Martha Jackson's Gallery; the Popular Image exhibition at the Washington Gallery of Art in 1963; and the 1964 American Supermarket exhibition at New York's Bianchini Gallery, which also featured Andy Warhol
, Claes Oldenburg
and Tom Wesselmann
. After exhibiting at Leo Castelli's
Gallery in 1964, Watts turned his back on the gallery system, and concentrated instead on the anti-art
of the emerging New York avant-garde centred around George Maciunas.
Watts met the artist and chemist George Brecht
in 1957 after the latter saw an exhibition of Watts' work and sought his acquaintance; the two would meet for lunch every week, with Kaprow occasionally joining them, for a number of years to discuss art and to plan joint exhibitions. One of the most famous was the proto-fluxus Yam Festival (1962–3), which used mail-art to build expectations for a month long series of happenings, performances and exhibitions at Rutgers, New York City and George Segal's
farm in New Jersey
. Participating artists included Alison Knowles
, Ay-O
, Al Hansen
, Ray Johnson
, John Cage
, and Dick Higgins
. The events ran parallel to George Maciunas' Fluxus Festivals in Europe (Sept 1962-early 1963) -which had already performed some of Watts' event scores in Düsseldorf- and the two events were officially joined when Maciunas published Brecht's event scores as Water Yam
, the first of the Flux boxes to be published. Watts' own flux collection, Robert Watts Events was published a year later and brought together many of the mail art event scores that had been used to publicise the Yam Festival.
One example of Watts' event scores around this point is Casual Event;
—inflate right front tire
—continue to inflate until tire blows out
—change tire*
—drive home
—*if car is newer model drive home on blown out tire
According to Henry Flynt
, Maciunas '[begged] Watts not to continue 'Yam' separately from Fluxus. Maciunas was desperate to unite the whole post-Cage movement under his command.'
Watts' friendship with Maciunas was cemented when the latter was confined to a hospital bed throughout May 1963. To cheer him up, Watts sent him Hospital Events (see http://printedmatter.org/catalogue/moreinfo.cfm?title_id=3931&return=/search/search.cfm&qty=0&type=1&email=&cookie1=D9E71EB4-1C42-ECEB-7880DA46C41B8750&retail=100.0000&qty=1&page=3&frompage=Search%20%3E%20%3CA%20HREF%3D%2Fcatalogue%2Fsearch%2Ecfm%3Femail%3D%26cookie1%3DD9E71EB4%2D1C42%2DECEB%2D7880DA46C41B8750%26search%3Dfluxus%2520box%26search%5Ftype%3D%3Efluxus%20box%3C%2FA%3E). Maciunas enjoyed the piece so much that he published it as an early Fluxbox; many of Watts' contemporary event cards were subsequently included in Fluxus 1, 1963, Maciunas' first year box compiling works by the members of the international avant-garde.
Over the years Watts contributed a number of works to Fluxus including a Flux Atlas, a collection of rocks from different countries, and a Flux Timekit, a series of boxes that housed objects that existed in different time scales, such as seeds to be planted, a time-lapsed photo of a speeding bullet and a pocket watch. He also set up Implosions Inc. with Maciunas to mass-produce novelty items, and helped run the Flux Housing Co-Operative, an artist-run scheme that is held responsible for the rehabilitation and gentrification of SoHo, offering cheap loft spaces to artists throughout the sixties and seventies. Watts himself was the first resident of the first working Flux Co-Op at 80 Wooster Street. Jonas Mekas
' cinematheque and Maciunas' apartment were housed in the same building which soon became the 'central Fluxus loft'. He took part in the notorious Flux Mass, and was one of the very few original artists apart from Maciunas himself to have neither distanced himself from the movement, nor to have been expelled.
His work is held in numerous collections, including The Museum of Modern Art
, New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art
, The Art Institute of Chicago
, The Philadelphia Museum of Art
, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
, Walker Art Center
, Minneapolis, Centre Georges Pompidou
, Paris, J. Paul Getty Museum
, Kunsthaus Zurich
, and Tate Modern
, London.
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
art movement Fluxus
Fluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
. Born in Burlington, Iowa
Burlington, Iowa
Burlington is a city in, and the county seat of Des Moines County, Iowa, United States. The population was 25,663 in the 2010 census, a decline from the 26,839 population in the 2000 census. Burlington is the center of a micropolitan area including West Burlington, Iowa and Middletown, Iowa and...
June 14, 1923, he became Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University
Rutgers University
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...
, New Jersey in 1953, a post he kept until 1984. In the 1950s, he was in close contact with other teachers at Rutgers including Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow
Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
, Geoffrey Hendricks
Geoffrey Hendricks
Geoffrey Hendricks is an American artist associated with Fluxus since the mid 1960s, and has styled himself as "cloudsmith" for his extensive work with sky imagery in paintings, on objects, in installations and performances. Hendricks was born in Littleton, New Hampshire in 1931...
and Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein
Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...
. This has led some critics to claim that pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
and conceptual art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...
began at Rutgers.
He organised the proto-fluxus Yam Festival, May 1963 with George Brecht
George Brecht
George Brecht , born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Mobil Oil...
, and was one of the main protagonists, along with George Maciunas
George Maciunas
George Maciunas was a Lithuanian-born American artist. He was a founding member of Fluxus, an international community of artists, architects, composers, and designers...
, in turning SoHo
SoHo
SoHo is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City, notable for being the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, and also, more recently, for the wide variety of stores and shops ranging from trendy boutiques to outlets of upscale national and international chain stores...
, New York, into an artist's quarter. He died Friday September 2, 1988 of lung cancer in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania
Martins Creek, Pennsylvania
Martins Creek is an unincorporated town in Lower Mt. Bethel Township, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, located along Martins Creek. The zip code is 18063. Its population was 1,200 as of the 1990 Census.-See also:...
.
He was also known as Bob Watts or Doctor Bob.
Early life
Mechanical engineering
Mechanical engineering is a discipline of engineering that applies the principles of physics and materials science for analysis, design, manufacturing, and maintenance of mechanical systems. It is the branch of engineering that involves the production and usage of heat and mechanical power for the...
at the University of Louisville
University of Louisville
The University of Louisville is a public university in Louisville, Kentucky. When founded in 1798, it was the first city-owned public university in the United States and one of the first universities chartered west of the Allegheny Mountains. The university is mandated by the Kentucky General...
, Watts served as an officer in the United States Navy aboard aircraft carriers. Watts left the Navy and moved to New York in 1948, where he studied art at the Art Students League and later at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
from where he gained a degree in the History of Art, majoring in pre-Columbian and non-Western Art. After becaming Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, 1953, he started to exhibit works in a proto-pop style. He participated in Pop Art shows such as New Forms, New Media exhibition in 1960 at Martha Jackson's Gallery; the Popular Image exhibition at the Washington Gallery of Art in 1963; and the 1964 American Supermarket exhibition at New York's Bianchini Gallery, which also featured Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
, Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects...
and Tom Wesselmann
Tom Wesselmann
Tom Wesselmann was an American artist associated with the Pop art movement who worked in painting, collage and sculpture.-Early years:...
. After exhibiting at Leo Castelli's
Leo Castelli
Leo Castelli was an American art dealer. He was best known to the public as an art dealer whose gallery showcased cutting edge Contemporary art for five decades...
Gallery in 1964, Watts turned his back on the gallery system, and concentrated instead on the anti-art
Anti-art
Anti-art is a loosely-used term applied to an array of concepts and attitudes that reject prior definitions of art and question art in general. Anti-art tends to conduct this questioning and rejection from the vantage point of art...
of the emerging New York avant-garde centred around George Maciunas.
"[His] work obviously related to that of the Pop artists that I had discovered a few years before...Watts' chromed objects closely related to Johns'Jasper JohnsJasper Johns, Jr. is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.-Life:Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents' marriage failed...
cast beer cans and flashlights, for instance. The 1964 exhibition also included Watts' sculpture of plaster cast loaves of bread on shelves. That work, in particular, I think of as one of his most important inventions. I'm also particularly fond of the chrome eggs and egg carton in my own collection which will appear in this [posthumous] show. The public will be surprised that an artist -so promising at such an early date- did not receive through the years the appreciation he deserved." Leo Castelli
The Yam Festival
George Brecht
George Brecht , born George Ellis MacDiarmid, was an American conceptual artist and avant-garde composer as well as a professional chemist who worked as a consultant for companies including Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, and Mobil Oil...
in 1957 after the latter saw an exhibition of Watts' work and sought his acquaintance; the two would meet for lunch every week, with Kaprow occasionally joining them, for a number of years to discuss art and to plan joint exhibitions. One of the most famous was the proto-fluxus Yam Festival (1962–3), which used mail-art to build expectations for a month long series of happenings, performances and exhibitions at Rutgers, New York City and George Segal's
George Segal (artist)
George Segal was an American painter and sculptor associated with the Pop Art movement. He was presented with a National Medal of Arts in 1999.-Works:...
farm in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
. Participating artists included Alison Knowles
Alison Knowles
Alison Knowles in New York City is an American visual artist known for her soundworks, installations, performances, and publications. Knowles was very active in the Fluxus movement, and continues to create work inspired by her Fluxus experience....
, Ay-O
Ay-O
is a Japanese artist, who has been associated with Fluxus since its international beginnings in the 1960s.-From Democrato to Fluxus:Probably, the best reference to understand the early years of Ay-O is the autobiographical retrospective book in the references "Ay-O, Over the Rainbow, Ay-O...
, Al Hansen
Al Hansen
Alfred Earl "Al" Hansen was an American artist considered as one of the most important Fluxus figures. He was a Norwegian American....
, Ray Johnson
Ray Johnson
Raymond Edward Johnson , known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art...
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, and Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins
Dick Higgins was a composer, poet, printer, and early Fluxus artist. Higgins was born in Cambridge, England, but raised in the United States in various parts of New England, including Worcester, Massachusetts, Putney, Vermont, and Concord, New Hampshire.Like other Fluxus artists, Higgins studied...
. The events ran parallel to George Maciunas' Fluxus Festivals in Europe (Sept 1962-early 1963) -which had already performed some of Watts' event scores in Düsseldorf- and the two events were officially joined when Maciunas published Brecht's event scores as Water Yam
Water Yam (artist's multiple)
Water Yam is an artist's book by the American artist George Brecht. Originally published in Germany, June 1963 in a box designed by George Maciunas and typeset by Tomas Schmit, it has been re-published in various countries several times since...
, the first of the Flux boxes to be published. Watts' own flux collection, Robert Watts Events was published a year later and brought together many of the mail art event scores that had been used to publicise the Yam Festival.
"I consider Yam Lecture a chain of events arranged in such a way that the sequence is quite random, no performance exactly like any other, with changing performers, costumers, actions, sounds, words, images, and so on. The 'structure' is such that it is very flexible (nearly non-existent) and permits inclusion of anything one wished to do and any possible future changes. It is a loose and open thing. The audience puts it together the way it wishes or not at all."
"Similar ideas were at work in Yam Festival which George Brecht and I carried out last year. In effect this was a mailing to an audience, sometimes randomly chosen, of an assortment of things. Some were event cards similar to the above; others were objects, food, pencils, soap, photos, actions, words, facts, statements, declarations, puzzles, etc. Certain ones were by subscription. One might say this way of working is a way or manner of calling attention to what one wishes to talk about; or it is a way of talking about it. Or it is a way to hold up for scrutiny a range of material that ordinarily is not so directly useful for art or has not yet been so considered." Robert Watts, quoted in the Times Literary Supplement, 1964
One example of Watts' event scores around this point is Casual Event;
Casual Event (1962)
—drive car to filling station—inflate right front tire
—continue to inflate until tire blows out
—change tire*
—drive home
—*if car is newer model drive home on blown out tire
According to Henry Flynt
Henry Flynt
Henry Flynt is a philosopher, avant-garde musician, anti-art activist and exhibited artist often associated with Conceptual Art, Fluxus and Nihilism.-Background:...
, Maciunas '[begged] Watts not to continue 'Yam' separately from Fluxus. Maciunas was desperate to unite the whole post-Cage movement under his command.'
Fluxus
"It must have been Alison Knowles who called me up to say [George Maciunas] was in bad shape with asthma in an Air Force hospital in Germany and needed help or at least some encouragement.... I decided to send something for entertainment, so I stuck some pistol caps on the back of old photos from an Italian magazine of WWI vintage. I remember there was a photo of a priest blessing a propeller of an Italian Air Force fighter plane. The idea was to put the photo on an anvil and hit the front with a hammer until all the caps exploded. Later GM said he got a big kick out of this procedure, especially since after he exploded all the caps, he set up the photos' remains for the locals to continue the destruction.... he said the people beat the shit out of those photos until there was nothing left but fuzz." Robert Watts, 1980
Over the years Watts contributed a number of works to Fluxus including a Flux Atlas, a collection of rocks from different countries, and a Flux Timekit, a series of boxes that housed objects that existed in different time scales, such as seeds to be planted, a time-lapsed photo of a speeding bullet and a pocket watch. He also set up Implosions Inc. with Maciunas to mass-produce novelty items, and helped run the Flux Housing Co-Operative, an artist-run scheme that is held responsible for the rehabilitation and gentrification of SoHo, offering cheap loft spaces to artists throughout the sixties and seventies. Watts himself was the first resident of the first working Flux Co-Op at 80 Wooster Street. Jonas Mekas
Jonas Mekas
Jonas Mekas is a Lithuanian-born American filmmaker, writer, and curator who has often been called "the godfather of American avant-garde cinema." His work has been exhibited in museums and festivals across Europe and America.-Biography:...
' cinematheque and Maciunas' apartment were housed in the same building which soon became the 'central Fluxus loft'. He took part in the notorious Flux Mass, and was one of the very few original artists apart from Maciunas himself to have neither distanced himself from the movement, nor to have been expelled.
Posthumous Reputation
Referred to as the invisible man of Fluxus and Pop by the critic Kim Levin, a term later used as the title of a solo posthumous show in Kassel, Watts remains a 'distant, aloof, and enigmatic' figure. In general his reputation has gradually recovered since the late 90s, although not without comments on some of the works' perceived sexism. As individual members of Fluxus have increasingly been singled out for re-appraisals, Watts work has been seen in a number of solo and small group shows across the USA and Europe.
'There is something impersonal or phlegmatic in Watts's composition, a deliberately flattened sense of timing. This aspect of his work has not aged as gracefully as have his concerns with commodity and its absurdities. A puckish wit remains where media and message are crisply meshed, as in Portrait Dress, 1965, a see-through vinyl frock with pockets for photographs, or the suite of neon signs in which the signatures of masters like Ingres, Duchamp, and Lichtenstein glow like ads. Other items in this show appeared dated, such as the Lucite sculptures with embedded photographs of food, or the painted plaster casts of bread lined up in a grayscale row, but this was largely because their semiotic jokesterism has been so wholly assimilated by successors that it cannot startle now as it did then.' Frances Richard, 2001
His work is held in numerous collections, including 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 City, 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...
, The Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
, The Philadelphia Museum of Art
Philadelphia Museum of Art
The Philadelphia Museum of Art is among the largest art museums in the United States. It is located at the west end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park. The Museum was established in 1876 in conjunction with the Centennial Exposition of the same year...
, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...
, 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...
, Minneapolis, Centre Georges Pompidou
Centre 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, 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...
, Kunsthaus Zurich
Kunsthaus Zürich
The Kunsthaus Zürich houses one of the most important art museums in Switzerland and Europe, collected by the local Kunstverein, called Zürcher Kunstgesellschaft, and holdings running from the Middle Ages to contemporary art, with an emphasis on Swiss art.Kunsthaus is also the name of the tram stop...
, and Tate Modern
Tate Modern
Tate Modern is a modern art gallery located in London, England. It is Britain's national gallery of international modern art and forms part of the Tate group . It is the most-visited modern art gallery in the world, with around 4.7 million visitors per year...
, London.