Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

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 ever book on an artist.

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 Author Biography Lawrence Weschler’s many books include Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Vermeer in Bosnia, and Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.

Author Biography

Lawrence Weschler’s many books include Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder, Vermeer in Bosnia, and Everything That Rises: A Book of Convergences, which won the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism.