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Robert Irwin: An Interview

Blumenthal/Horsfield

1976 00:40:32 United StatesEnglishB&WMono4:3Video
Tags:
Blumenthal/Horsfield Interviews , Interview , Painting

Description

Robert Irwin (b. 1928, Long Beach, California)  followed in the Abstract Expressionist tradition until he shifted his focus onto installation projects that play upon site-specific uses of light. Since the 1980s, he has created large-scale public space designs that use natural light, plants, and garden architecture. His monumental garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, opened in 1997, ranks as perhaps his most famous public project. Irwin has conceived fifty-five site-conditional projects since 1975, ranging from the architectural and grounds design of Dia: Beacon Center for the Arts (completed in 2003) to the lush Central Gardens for the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California (completed in 2005). Robert Irwin became the first artist to receive the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur “Genius” Award in 1984.  Robert Irwin has been with the Gallery since 1966.

In this interview, Irwin discusses his work as a painter and uses of light in an art historical context. "In figurative art, the mark has the greatest amount of content, the highest level of content," he notes. 

A historical interview originally recorded in 1976 and re-edited in 2003.

About Blumenthal/Horsfield

Lyn Blumenthal has been recognized as a leading and innovative experimental feminist media artist and teacher. Her multi-disciplinary body of work included videos, sculpture, drawings and critical essays.  She forged new directions and objectives for the field of independent video—not only creating important video pieces, but also envisioning alternative video as a critical voice within the culture, capable of exposing the numerous foibles and blind spots of mainstream media. Committed to the application of feminist theory to video practice, Blumenthal’s early ’80s art tapes investigate issues of women’s identity and sexuality as a crisis of representation. Her tapes weave together stunning visuals and theoretical analysis, most with an incisive humor that tears away the veil from cultural institutions such as television and the family.  Blumenthal was co-director of the Video Data Bank with Kate Horsfield from its founding in 1976 until her death in 1988.

Kate Horsfield received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1976 and in the same year co-founded the Video Data Bank with the late Lyn Blumenthal. Horsfield was Executive Director of the Video Data Bank from 1988 to 2006.  Horsfield and Blumenthal began their research in contemporary art in video by producing over 200 video interviews with contemporary artists, photographers and critics, including artists such as Lee Krasner, Romare Bearden, Alice Neel, Joseph Beuys, Buckminster Fuller, and Vito Acconci. This group of interviews has become one of the largest and most valuable primary collections of resource material on contemporary artists in the country.  Horsfield has also produced serveral thematic anthologies of video and collaborated with Nereyda Garcia-Ferraz on Ana Medieta: Fuego de Tierra.  From 1980 to 1999, she taught courses at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Texas, Austin.  After her retirement from Video Data Bank in 2006, Horsfield has split her time between New York, NY and Austin, TX.

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