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Robert Irwin
Monograph: Robert Irwin Getty Garden (hand signed and inscribed by Robert Irwin)

2002

About the Item

Robert Irwin Getty Garden (hand signed and inscribed by Robert Irwin), 2002 Hardback monograph with dust jacket Hand signed and inscribed by Robert Irwin 11 1/2 × 10 × 1 inches Gorgeous, lavishly illustrated hardback signed monograph of Irwin's design of the gardens at the Getty Museum in California. The ink inscription reads in part: For Bess, in abiding marvel! -- Robert Irwin Book information: Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (August 29, 2002) Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 192 pages with color and bw illustrations Publisher's blurb: In the early 1990s the design and creation of the Central Garden at the Getty Center were entrusted to the distinguished contemporary visual artist Robert Irwin. Irwin-a member of California's "light and space" movement-was an unexpected choice for this major commission, and his work has aroused intense interest in the art world and among gardening enthusiasts and visitors to the Getty Center. In Robert Irwin Getty Garden, Lawrence Weschler offers a lively account of the creation of what Irwin has playfully termed "a sculpture in the form of a garden aspiring to be art." Weschler's narrative is followed by a transcript of conversations in which he and Irwin, in a series of walks through the garden, discuss in detail the decisions, both philosophical and practical, that shaped the making of this major art work in Southern California. The book contains more than one hundred color illustrations, many of them specially commissioned from photographer Becky Cohen. The photographs capture the stunning variety of colors and textures of the plant forms selected by Irwin. They also reveal the care and precision that went into the creation of each element of the garden environment, from the handrails and lighting fixtures to the huge azalea rings and waterfall that make a visit to the Getty Central Garden an unusually thought-provoking experience. Robert Irwin has exhibited widely in galleries and museums in North America and abroad. Editorial Reviews: From Publishers Weekly In Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Wonder, Weschler took readers through the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, where some of the exhibits are hoaxes. None of the horticulture of the Central Garden of the Getty Center in Los Angeles is fake, and it is intelligently designed to be incomparably beautiful. This paean to the garden's conception and execution by designer Robert Irwin presents an introductory essay by Weschler (a shorter version appeared in the New Yorker in 1997), and a long, dialectical walk through the grounds with the two men. Their conversation is illustrated by landscape photographer Cohen's 166 color and 38 black-and-white shots, capturing the garden at various stages of construction and throughout the seasons. Begun in 1992, the project blossomed to 134,000 square feet by the time the museum opened in late 1997, and includes 300 plant varieties. Some of Cohen's photos are spectacular, revealing the gentle curves of green formed by Irwin's hedge work, or explosive blossoms. Some shots, however, are cropped in a manner that fails to best highlight the garden's elements, and a few reproductions are dull. That Weschler and Irwin's dialogue retains all the mundanities of spoken exchange ("Irwin: ... what do you call those things in the center? I've forgotten. Weschler: The pistils. Irwin: Yeah, the pistils. And now, over here...") can make the going a little tedious, but this is a high-end walk that design heads and Weschler fans will find a glorious airing. Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Spectacular, stunning, breathtaking-it's the only way to describe artist Robert Irwin's fantastic gardens at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. This book provides a generous helping of photographs by Cohen, Alfred Eisenstaedt Awards 2000 winner, showing the many moods of this locale, from botanical close-ups to striking panoramas. The text married to these images is most appropriate. First, there is an essay that originally appeared in The New Yorker in 1997, tying the creation of the gardens to Richard Meier and his architectural handiwork for a Californian hillside. The rest of the book is an intimate dialog between Weschler, a New Yorker staff writer, and Irwin, which is based on walks in and around the Getty landscape. The text is physically interspersed in the book among and around Cohen's images, giving the reader a nice visual context. Altogether, a delicious combination of insight and imagery; highly recommended for academic and public libraries with collections dedicated to gardening and landscape architecture. Edward J. Valauskas, Lib. & Plant Information Office, Chicago Botanic Garden Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. About Robert Irwin: Robert Irwin is among the most significant American artists and theoreticians working today and is renowned for his innovative site-conditioned artworks that explore the effects of light through interventions in space and architecture. Developing an Abstract Expressionist approach to painting by the late 1950s, Irwin had his first monographic exhibition at Felix Landau Gallery, Los Angeles, in 1957, then moving to the newly founded Ferus Gallery, where he began exhibiting in 1958. By the early sixties, Irwin shifted to creating more restrained works with his line paintings, guided principally by questions of structure, color, and perception, and his dot paintings, works on gently bowed supports composed with small dots of near-complementary colors. In 1966, Irwin initiated a series of curved aluminum and acrylic discs that he painted and displayed with an arm extending out from the wall, creating a viewing experience that is impossible for a work on canvas. By 1970, Irwin abandoned his studio, embarking on an extended inquiry of artmaking beyond the frame and the traditional art object. Working in existing sites, he composes with materials that are ephemeral, but which substantially transform the viewers’ visual and phenomenological experience. Irwin’s interventions blur the distinctions between space and artwork, exploring the nature of light, volume, and perceptual psychology. Irwin has created numerous permanent installations for museums and other public sites such as 1° 2° 3° 4° (1997) at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, La Jolla, his first permanent museum installation. Framing an ocean view and literally opening up the gallery space to exterior light, air, smells, and sounds, 1° 2° 3° 4° exemplifies the subtle but dramatic transformations inherent to Irwin’s work. For its 125th anniversary, Indianapolis Museum of Art commissioned Light and Space III (2008) for its Pulliam Great Hall, a multifloored interior space in which the artist arranged fluorescent lights to create an irregular grid, flanked by semi-transparent fabric scrims. Irwin has also created permanent site-conditioned landscape works, a facet of his practice initiated by his design of the Central Gardens at the J. Paul Getty Center, Los Angeles (1997). The Central Garden incorporates Irwin’s landscape design in accord with Richard Meier’s architecture and the ravine of its site, as well as layered combinations of plantings that juxtapose color, texture, and other sensory experiences with natural forms that vary over time. Irwin’s large-scale permanent installation Untitled (dawn to dusk) opened in July 2016 at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas, occupying the site of a dilapidated former hospital building measuring approximately 10,000 square feet. Irwin designed the courtyard and divided the building’s interior into two halves—making one wing dark and the other light. With regularly spaced windows and scrims bisecting each side, the installation orchestrates viewers’ perceptions of light, interior space, and the surrounding landscape. The project, which was in development for fifteen years, is the first free-standing structure devoted exclusively to Irwin’s work. Over the past decade, Irwin has returned to his studio, using it as an experimental space to develop sculptural works with florescent lights and acrylic, such as his Sculpture/Configuration works exhibited at Pace in New York (2018), while continuing to develop his site-conditioned installations. Irwin employs a wide range of media, from fluorescent lights to fabric scrims, colored and tinted gels, paint, wire, acrylic, and glass. He makes art that he considers “conditional,” responding to the context of its specific environment while displacing emphasis away from the materials themselves, however, drawing our attention to perception. = Courtesy of Pace Gallery
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