Robert IrwinThe Beauty of Questions

Note Taking

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Light + Space ArtOrigins

Art + Science

Robert Irwin, James Turre%, with Ed

Wortz at CalTech

Solitude

So, like a forgotten fire, a childhood can always flare up again within us.

Irwin had taken the means of traditional painting right to the edge, but he was still

balancing on this side of the edge.

Phenomenology

Irwin says, "The real beauty of philosophy is the examination of your own moment, your own being in circumstance."

"When people walk into a gallery where I’ve installed some of the things I’ve been doing recently, a lot of them say, "Oh, it’s an empty room. The question then, of course, is empty of what?" The point of Irwin’s work is to draw people into a place once considered too incidental to have meaning. For an artist to make the viewer a critical player by inscribing his or her specific experience into the work is a humanistic goal.

During a period of intense activity—holed up in his studio for fifteen-hour days, seven days a week, for months on end—he

produced ten canvases, each with two straight lines hand-splayed over a monotone ground, into which they virtually

disappeared. Although the lines’ placement had been painstakingly calibrated for the most neutral effect, each

canvas still read as “a painting of two lines,” and Irwin next wondered, “Is it possible to paint a painting without subject

and without linear mark?”

During the sixties, therefore, Irwin systematically pursued the mystery of aesthetic presence, dismantling the activity of painting

through a series of progressive questionings—or, more properly phrased, bringings-into-question—at each stage stripping away the

inessential elements of the art act while simultaneously opening up his perceptions to a whole range of experience that had previously

been excluded. “Is it possible to paint a painting without

image?”

Connections

The Artist’s StudioTraditional

en plein air

Artist + Patron

Artist at Work

The Artist’s StudioContemporary Examples

Warhol’s “Factory”

The Factory was the hip hangout for artsy types, amphetamine users, and the Warhol superstars. It was famed for its groundbreaking parties.

Robert Irwin

Venice, CA studio on Market Street,

1970

St-Exupery / Turrell

Studio Olafur Eliasson forces the visiting critic to reconsider what an artist’s studio encompasses, and the critic’s relationship to it. For the most part, this is due to the studio’s labyrinth-like complexity—the bewildering depth and range of projects and people in play.

http://www.olafureliasson.net/studio/pdf/

Sternberg_Press_Coles_Eliasson.pdf

Tate Modern - London

Olafur Eliasson’s Weather Project

Define: Artist’s StudioWhat does it do? What is it for?

The GuggenheimFrank Lloyd Wright’s design transformed by Turre%

What do artists DO?

FREE ASSOCIATION EXERCISE

Attitudes about Artists