At 87, Robert Irwin perfects art of 'pure feeling'

What does it mean to see, to really see? Robert Irwin says it all starts with feeling.

The leading postwar American artist began his career as a painter, and the first US museum survey outside his native California in four decades focuses on his gradual progression toward the evanescent, large-scale installations for which he is best known.

"You have to drop a lot of assumptions," said Irwin, dressed in his trademark baseball cap, t-shirt and jeans, on the eve of the show opening Thursday in Washington. "I started proposing the idea that the role of an artist is not in the studio, not making things, but as a kind of an esthetician."

At 87, Irwin is resurgent, with another show featuring a luminous, gauzy maze at New York's Dia: Beacon museum and a huge installation at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas opening in July that has been 15 years in the making.

The exhibit at Washington's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden includes 29 works created from 1958 to 1971, a period during which Irwin progressively stripped his works of references to the natural world to focus instead on creating experiences for the public.

"I don't think first, I feel first," he told AFP.

- 'Pure energy' -

Several series of increasingly large abstract oil paintings demonstrate Irwin's step-by-step evolution from textured, expressionist strokes to straight, spaced out lines, and ultimately to fields of dots with color variations that cancel each other out and seem to disappear into the canvas.

The dot paintings from the early 1960s illustrate how the artist-philosopher came to conceive his works' value in terms of the viewer's experience, rather than as mere objects.

At first blush, the work appears to be nothing more than a white canvas.

But after standing before the painting for some time, it seems to change, as if energy were pulsing from the center of the silver white space before fading again.

"The dots become just pure energy," explained Irwin, who created the mesmerizing effect by producing a slight curve forward in the canvas, which was then covered painstakingly with small dots of color.

Before long, Irwin was focused on extending the edge of the frame, eventually taking it apart and discarding it altogether.

- 'Dynamite' -

Since abandoning the studio in the early 1970s in favor of large-scale installations, Irwin has insisted his work respond entirely to its physical surroundings.

Of the approximately 75 site-conditioned pieces Irwin has created since 1975, some of the most memorable are his lush gardens at the Getty Center in Los Angeles and his architectural and garden design at a former Nabisco factory that houses the Dia Art Foundation's collection in Beacon, on the banks of the Hudson River outside New York.

His keystone piece at the Hirshhorn in essence transforms the iconic circular structure into a square.

"This circular thing is a rather weak idea for a museum, because it tends to dictate too much," said Irwin, who in a first for the Hirshhorn displayed nothing on its rounded walls.

Across one side of an outer gallery, he placed 100 feet (30.5 meters) of scrim to give the illusion of a new, straight "wall," dramatically enhancing the remaining curved side as a result.

Daylight filters through a framed, door-like opening into the inner gallery.

"The first thing you see when you walk in is that big, sweeping wall. All of a sudden, it's dynamite," Irwin said.

"The whole thing, experientially, is quite powerful, but there's nothing there per se. No thing, no idea, there's no mural on the wall saying 'Stop the Vietnam War.'"

Like much of Irwin's work, it's barely there yet succeeds in challenging the viewer's perception of light and space.

- 'Kick in the ass' -

Before launching into his full-blown installations, Irwin had played with light using discs and columns.

The painted convex acrylic or metal discs shown at the Hirshhorn, hung away from the wall, are identical in shape. But two are lit by artificial "skylights" and another by lights strategically placed on the floor and ceiling, producing a completely different result with four overlapping shadows.

"Shadows are three quarters of how we see," explained Irwin, who designed the exhibit's layout in such a way that viewers come upon one disc, progress through his paintings and arrive at another -- but experience them in an entirely different way.

"To give them a kick in the ass," he quipped.

Most of the works shown here were made during a turbulent period in American life, from the Vietnam War to the civil rights movement and president John F. Kennedy's assassination.

But Irwin is adamant that art should have nothing to do with politics, a utopian vision shared with many of his contemporaries.

"Art has to do with pure feelings and the ability of human beings to articulate them," Irwin said. "I am making an argument for another way of looking at the world."