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When this book first appeared in 1982, it introduced readers to Robert Irwin, the Los Angeles artist "who one day got hooked on his own curiosity and decided to live it." Now expanded to include six additional chapters and twenty-four pages of color plates, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees chronicles three decades of conversation between Lawrence Weschler and light and space master Irwin. It surveys many of Irwin's site-conditioned projects—in particular the Central Gardens at the Getty Museum (the subject of an epic battle with the site's principal architect, Richard Meier) and the design that transformed an abandoned Hudson Valley factory into Dia's new Beacon campus—enhancing what many had already considered the best book ever on an artist.
Price: $32.95
Pages: 336
Publisher: University of California Press
Imprint: University of California Press
Publication Date:
02 February 2009
Trim Size: 8.00 X 6.00 in
ISBN: 9780520256095
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
"Irwin worked through a series of styles which recapitulate a complete strand in American painting. Figuration was replaced by semi-abstraction. This was followed by Abstract Expressionism, then by color-field painting, conceptual art and land art. As each step can seem a willful rejection of complexity and richness, the reasons for the moves Irwin made must justify as well as explain. Set out in Weschler’s book (much of it is direct quotation from interviews with Irwin), they are convincing. Irwin’s story is one of aesthetic claustrophobia, of attempts to break out of the limits set by his own work."
Lawrence Weschler's many books include Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Vermeer in Bosnia, and Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.
A Note on the Illustrations
A Further Note on the Drifting Present in the Narrative That Follows
Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (1982)
Introduction
Lifesource
1. High School (1943-1946)
2. Childhood (1928-1943)
3. Army, Schooling, Europe, and Early Work (1946-1957)
The Narrows (Part 1)
4. Ferus (Los Angeles/ New York)
5. The Early Ferus Years
From Abstract Expressionism through the Early Lines (1957-1962)
6. The Late Ferus Years: The Late Lines (1962-1964)
The Narrows (Part 2)
7. The Dots (1964-1967)
8. The Discs (1967-1969)
9. Post-disc Experiments and Columns (1968-1970)
Delta
Prelude
10. Teaching
11. Art and Science (1968-1970)
12. Playing the Horses
13. The Room at the Museum of Modern Art (1970)
Debouchement
Oceanic
14. The Desert
15. Being Available in Response
16. Some Situations (1970-1976)
17. Reading and Writing
18. The Whitney Retrospective Down to Point Zero (1977)
19. Since the Whitney: Return to the World (1977-1981)
Present All Around
20. Seeing Isn't Doing (1985)
21. Play It as It Lays and Keep it in Play
The Irwin Retrospective at MOCA in Los Angeles(1993)
22. When Fountainheads Collide: Robert Irwin at Richard Meier's Getty (1997)
23. Heaven: Irwin and Meyerowitz at the Dia (2000)
24. Irwin in his Seventies (2007-2008)
Afterword: On Robert Irwin and David Hockney
Acknowledgements
Bibliographic notes
Index
A Further Note on the Drifting Present in the Narrative That Follows
Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (1982)
Introduction
Lifesource
1. High School (1943-1946)
2. Childhood (1928-1943)
3. Army, Schooling, Europe, and Early Work (1946-1957)
The Narrows (Part 1)
4. Ferus (Los Angeles/ New York)
5. The Early Ferus Years
From Abstract Expressionism through the Early Lines (1957-1962)
6. The Late Ferus Years: The Late Lines (1962-1964)
The Narrows (Part 2)
7. The Dots (1964-1967)
8. The Discs (1967-1969)
9. Post-disc Experiments and Columns (1968-1970)
Delta
Prelude
10. Teaching
11. Art and Science (1968-1970)
12. Playing the Horses
13. The Room at the Museum of Modern Art (1970)
Debouchement
Oceanic
14. The Desert
15. Being Available in Response
16. Some Situations (1970-1976)
17. Reading and Writing
18. The Whitney Retrospective Down to Point Zero (1977)
19. Since the Whitney: Return to the World (1977-1981)
Present All Around
20. Seeing Isn't Doing (1985)
21. Play It as It Lays and Keep it in Play
The Irwin Retrospective at MOCA in Los Angeles(1993)
22. When Fountainheads Collide: Robert Irwin at Richard Meier's Getty (1997)
23. Heaven: Irwin and Meyerowitz at the Dia (2000)
24. Irwin in his Seventies (2007-2008)
Afterword: On Robert Irwin and David Hockney
Acknowledgements
Bibliographic notes
Index