When he began painting in the 1950s, Robert Irwin created art works that were large and gestural in the vein of his contemporaries associated with Abstract Expressionism. Yearning for something new, however, Irwin began to concentrate more on the perceptual aspects of the artwork itself, creating paintings, such as Untitled, that were less concerned with the physical properties of shape, line and color than his earlier work. In this canvas the artist places two lines at a distance so that the eye is unable to read them simultaneously. Irwin explained: “Your eye tends to become caught up in a sort of negative space…and you don’t really look at the lines at all.” His movement away from the material nature of the object to its perceptual effects led him to play a major role in the Southern California-based Light and Space movement of the 1970s.
Details
- Artist Name: Robert Irwin (American, 1928-2023)
- Title: Untitled
- Date: 1962-63
- Medium: Oil on canvas
- Dimensions: 83 1/8 x 83 1/4 in. (211.1 x 211.5 cm)
- Credit Line: Norton Simon Museum, Gift of the Artist
- Accession Number: P.1969.096
- Copyright: © Robert Irwin / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object Information
Pasadena Art Museum, Pasadena, 1969-1975;
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, 1975.
Color Fields
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1996-11-24 to 1997-03-30
Robert Irwin
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1993-06-20 to 1993-08-15
- Kölnischer Kunstverein, 1994-03-15 to 1994-05-15
- Musée d'art moderne de la ville de Paris, 1994-06-22 to 1994-09-30
- Madrid, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1995-01-31 to 1995-04-17
Selections from the Permanent Collection and the Norton Simon Museum
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1989-02-05 to 1989-05-28
American Art Since 1950 from the Norton Simon Museum
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1990-06-30 to 1990-09-09
A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 2004-03-14 to 2004-08-03
Surface Truths: Abstract Painting in the Sixties
- Norton Simon Museum, 2011-03-25 to 2011-08-15
Pasadena to Santa Barbara: A Selected History of Art in Southern California, 1951-1969
- Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 2012-02-11 to 2012-05-06
Recent Acquisitions, 1969
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1969-11-24 to 1970-01-18
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1974
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1974-03-16 to 1974-06-06
West Coast Art
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1972-06-20 to 1972-09-03
Works from the Pasadena Art Museum
- Vancouver Art Gallery, 1970-04-14 to 1970-05-10
American Art of the 1960s from the Norton Simon Museum
- Los Angeles, The Temporary Contemporary, 1990-03-13 to 1990-06-13
- Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.), 1988-10-04 to 1989-02-05
Permanent and Loan Collection, 1973
- Pasadena Museum of Modern Art, 1973-01-30 to 1973-12-31
Selections from the Permanent Collection
- Pasadena Art Museum, 1971-07-13 to 1971-09-19
- The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Robert Irwin, 1994, pp. 102, 192
- Humblet, Claudine, La Nouvelle Abstraction Américaine 1950-1970, 2003, Vol. III p. 1640
- Goldstein, Anne, Diedrich Diederichsen, Jonathan Flatley, James Meyer, and Anne Rorimer, A Minimal Future? Art as Object 1958-1968, 2004, pp. 242, 449
- Joyce, Julie et al., Pasadena to Santa Barbara: A Selected History of Art in Southern California, 1951-1969, 2012, p. 90
- Joyce, Julie et al., Pasadena to Santa Barbara: A Selected History of Art in Southern California, 1951-1969, 2012, p. 129
- Evelyn Hankins et al, Robert Irwin: All the Rules WIll Change, 2016, Figure 13 p. #26
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