Found: Robert Irwin

On Jan. 2 I saw the Robert Irwin show(s) at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Now, on April 6 I'm writing about them. So what took me so long?

I've been telling myself that my excuse is Weschlerian, that Irwin has been written about so well, so much, that anything that I could add would be mere verbiage.

The other problem is assessing what the heck Irwin is. Over the course of more than 50 years Irwin has been an abstract expressionist (of the Bay Area, loaded-brush variety), a minimalist painter, a minimalist sculptor, a post-minimalist sculptor, an installation artist, a light-and-space artist, an op-artist, an architect, and a landscape artist (or perhaps a hyper-controlling land artist). The MCASD show included examples of all of this, although some of Irwin's modes of working obviously had to be represented by works on paper.

I've known for a while that my real problem is that I don't know about which Irwin to write., and that I've been pulling a Meyer Schapiro by looking for the Unity of Irwin's Art. Finally, I've found one. The magic of the MCASD show is that it put all those Irwins out for us to find.

When you look at Irwin's stripe paintings, it takes a minute but at some point the painting controls your eye and moves it. If you take the time to walk up to a dot painting and to stare, it absorbs you. If you look at a well-installed disc, like this one, and let your eyes glaze over, it's like entering the third dimension. If you look at the fluorescent lights-piece that Irwin made for MCASD, you find geometry, angles, shadows, patterns, infinity. If you walk around this piece, you can find the Gluckmanian space you're in without ever looking at the space itself. The artwork absorbs it, and returns it.

This isn't taking-a-minute-to-look the way it is with Bonnard, where shapes on the margins eventually reveal themselves, or taking-a-minute-to-look the way it is with a cubist painting, where you're able to reassemble a fragmented image. With Irwin it's about finding the work of art itself.

So that's the unifying theme of Irwin's art: If you sit down, shut up, stop talking with your friends and just look, you'll find it. But you have to be willing to be quiet and careful, because if you aren't you might miss it altogether. [Photo one, two.]

Related: Amazon is finally shipping the terrific catalogue/DVD, and at $24 off.