Film: A Desert of Pure Feeling
Key Ideas from the film about the artist, Robert Irwin
This was one of the most meaningful photographs I took last year. It’s hard to translate the experience of being in the desert and witnessing a super-bloom in March into a photograph. Missing are the low clouds of the sky, the feel of the air, the quietness, and the mountains in the distance.
Another highlight later in the year was seeing the new documentary film about the artist, Robert Irwin, called A Desert of Pure Feeling. Irwin is one of my mentors in seeing and someone who also loved the desert. The film came out in mid-October and I was able to see it in a movie theatre. Irwin died just a few days later, at the age of 95.
Robert Irwin was a painter and installation artist, an original member of the U.S. West Coast light and space movement of the 1960’s. He began as an abstract painter, gradually moving to whole room and outdoor installations designed to interact with their immediate environment. In 1984, he became the first recipient of the MacArthur Foundation “genius” award. He is most known for his design of the gardens at the Getty Center and his final installation in Marfa, Texas through the Chinati Foundation.
“I feel, therefore I think, therefore, I am.” ~ Robert Irwin
The reason he is a mentor for me is because he spent his entire life exploring perception as the basis of art and life. I first learned of Irwin through the photographer, Uta Barth. She mentioned that she was very much influenced by a book about Irwin called Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, by Lawrence Weschler. I immediately purchased and read the book and wrote about it here and here. It is one of my foundational books for seeing.
Recently, I rewatched the documentary at home (rented from Apple TV) and took extensive notes. Below are some key ideas and quotes from the film but I highly recommend that you watch it yourself. Seeing Irwin as a young artist starting out and maintaining that zest for life and art as he aged is wonderful to behold.
On Being an Artist
“Money is too expensive. They want too much of your time, energy, commitment, your head. If you want to make radical change, you have to step outside of the system.” ~ Robert Irwin
Irwin did step out of the system. He made enough money to live by betting at the racetrack. This way he wasn’t beholden to art dealers or clients in his work. Later, he was awarded the MacArthur Genius Award, which allowed him to live comfortably.
“Right now, if you don’t produce something you don’t exist. A lot of activities have validity which are not about making things but more about the quality of your head, the manner in which you order your state of awareness, the way you look at things.” ~ Robert Irwin
While spending eight months alone with little conversation, Irwin discovered that his mind was very superficial, bouncing around like a rubber ball. I can relate. However, if he simply sat and weighed his own feelings, thoughts, attitudes, and sensibilities, he could begin to know something about things.
The role of the artist is in that initial phase in which we process the world as a sentient being. This is the perceptual space that takes into account the experience of the body. When we do this, what emerges is beauty. According to Irwin, this puts beauty as being equal to truth.
On Asking Questions
“What is the potential of this aesthetic interaction?” ~ Robert Irwin
Irwin saw being an artist as seeing everything as a possibility and asking questions. He said that he and the other artists in the light and space mouvement didn’t know what they were doing, and that’s why they were doing it, to find out. You start in a state of chaos and infinite possibilities. You make choices and assume responsibility for every single thing you do or don’t do.
At one point, he was curious about lines and he spent two years, 12-15 hours a day, 7 days a week, painting two lines on a canvas. Many of these hours were spent just staring at the canvas.
Art as an Experience Tied to Place
“If I say to you, you can make something beautiful, the best thing you’ve ever done, but it’s only for the last 20 minutes, would you make it? It all comes down to what you value, the experience or the object? The experience incarnates in you. You essentially act on or are a collection of experiences.” ~ Robert Irwin
Irwin wouldn’t allow photographs of his art because he was concerned with specifics of place and rejected the generalities of photographs, the art being taken out of context. With art in the classical sense, there is a strong commitment to permanence, which immediately eliminates the phenomenal experience of now, which doesn’t last.
When he began working with whole rooms, he said “What I want is the quality of light, its energy, its existence as matter.”
Space is palpable. That psychological space you carry around with you is a very real space, and there is a response that goes on there. Our entire perception is within the mind, the eyes, the body, the emotions. He responded to existing space, and then made some kind of intervention. He believed in letting Mother Nature have its way with the art.
Irwin’s practice was all about place, driving attention to what is already there. He said to begin right where you are, as an experiencing, perceiving human being in a world of real things. Look around. Pay attention.
Irwin’s art was entirely experiential; the viewer’s experience was dependent on the effects of the surroundings. Everything happens within a context. And when you leave a piece of art, the experience stays with you.
Irwin saw art as everywhere, being created in each moment. When we walk down the street, we’re creating art. It’s a continuous dialogue between what we know (our cognitive self) and what we feel (our sentient self). There’s always a negotiation going on between the two. And they’re both true.
On Art and Change
“I don’t think that revolutions cause change. Change causes revolutions.” ~ Robert Irwin
Irwin believed that this interactive process between creating within an environment should be a part of all of our planning, our systems; how we build cities, homes; how we conduct our lives, how we react and respond to another. Rather than imposing a particular view, stop and look and listen to what’s already there and ask what is needed. This way we can create a truly habitable and artistic world.
I decided to start out 2024 with this post because Irwin very much believed that perception was intimately tied to place. And, seeing clearly in a place is what the focus of my writing will be moving forward.