Synopses & Reviews
Rising young LA artist Ramiro Gomezandmdash;born in 1986 in San Bernardino, California, to undocumented Mexican immigrant parentsandmdash;bridges the divide between the wealthy and their usually invisible domestic help (the nannies, gardeners, housecleaners, and others who make their lifestyles possible). By inserting images of these workers into sly pastiches of iconic David Hockney paintings, subtly doctoring glossy magazine ads, and subversively slotting life-size painted cardboard cutouts into real-life situations, Gomez provides thought-provoking social commentary on class divisions.
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In a deceptively gentle and entertaining essay, Lawrence Weschler engages with Gomez and his work, teasing out threads of meaning and feeling. Itandrsquo;s a fascinating journey for anyone troubled by questions of social equity, the chasms between cultures and classes, and the purposes and possibilities of art.
Review
and#8220;A magnetic (now expanded) biography.and#8221;
Review
and#8220;Seeing is Forgetting may not be just the best biography of an artist out there but also one of the best books on contemporary art-making.and#8221;
Review
"'Seeing Is Forgetting' and 'True to Life' are not only about the artists talking to Weschler or, through him, to each other; they're about the artists talking to themselves."--Los Angeles Times Book Review
Review
“A magnetic (now expanded) biography.” Robert L. Pincus
Synopsis
When this book first appeared in 1982, it introduced readers to Robert Irwin, the Los Angeles artist "who one day got hooked on his own curiosity and decided to live it." Now expanded to include six additional chapters and twenty-four pages of color plates, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees chronicles three decades of conversation between Lawrence Weschler and light and space master Irwin. It surveys many of Irwin's site-conditioned projectsand#151;in particular the Central Gardens at the Getty Museum (the subject of an epic battle with the site's principal architect, Richard Meier) and the design that transformed an abandoned Hudson Valley factory into Dia's new Beacon campusand#151;enhancing what many had already considered the best book ever on an artist.
Synopsis
When this book first appeared in 1982, it introduced readers to Robert Irwin, the Los Angeles artist "who one day got hooked on his own curiosity and decided to live it." Now expanded to include six additional chapters and twenty-four pages of color plates, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees chronicles three decades of conversation between Lawrence Weschler and light and space master Irwin. It surveys many of Irwin's site-conditioned projects--in particular the Central Gardens at the Getty Museum (the subject of an epic battle with the site's principal architect, Richard Meier) and the design that transformed an abandoned Hudson Valley factory into Dia's new Beacon campus--enhancing what many had already considered the best book ever on an artist.
Synopsis
"Robert Irwin, perhaps the most influential of the California artists, moved from his beginnings in abstract expressionism through successive shifts in style and sensibility, into a new aesthetic territory altogether, one where philosophical concepts of perception and the world interact. Weschler has charted the journey with exceptional clarity and cogency. He has also, in the process, provided what seems to me the best running history of postwar West Coast art that I have yet seen."and#151;Calvin Tomkins
About the Author
LA-born Lawrence Weschler is the award-winning author of Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (about Robert Irwin), True to Life (about David Hockney), Mr. Wilsonandrsquo;s Cabinet of Wonders, and Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, among many others. He lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
A Note on the Illustrations
A Further Note on the Drifting Present in the Narrative That Follows
Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees (1982)
Introduction
Lifesource
1. High School (1943-1946)
2. Childhood (1928-1943)
3. Army, Schooling, Europe, and Early Work (1946-1957)
The Narrows (Part 1)
4. Ferus (Los Angeles/ New York)
5. The Early Ferus Years
From Abstract Expressionism through the Early Lines (1957-1962)
6. The Late Ferus Years: The Late Lines (1962-1964)
The Narrows (Part 2)
7. The Dots (1964-1967)
8. The Discs (1967-1969)
9. Post-disc Experiments and Columns (1968-1970)
Delta
Prelude
10. Teaching
11. Art and Science (1968-1970)
12. Playing the Horses
13. The Room at the Museum of Modern Art (1970)
Debouchement
Oceanic
14. The Desert
15. Being Available in Response
16. Some Situations (1970-1976)
17. Reading and Writing
18. The Whitney Retrospective Down to Point Zero (1977)
19. Since the Whitney: Return to the World (1977-1981)
Present All Around
20. Seeing Isn't Doing (1985)
21. Play It as It Lays and Keep it in Play
The Irwin Retrospective at MOCA in Los Angeles(1993)
22. When Fountainheads Collide: Robert Irwin at Richard Meier's Getty (1997)
23. Heaven: Irwin and Meyerowitz at the Dia (2000)
24. Irwin in his Seventies (2007-2008)
Afterword: On Robert Irwin and David Hockney
Acknowledgements
Bibliographic notes
Index