Lawrence Weschler

Robert Irwin

'On its more radical fringes, modern art merges with modern philosophy, and this excellent, provocative profile...points up the extent to which the act of percepton, rather than any specific objects, has become the subject of the avant-garde California artist's work....Weschler has a knack for clarifying avstruse artistic and philosophical concepts.

A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

"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."—Calvin Tomkins

Expanded Edition

Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

Wesley Burton

A must-read, even if you have no interest in art. Weschler is an insightful and masterful interlocutor who coaxes out the philosopher, critic, historian, and Zen master in Irwin.

Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin

Reviews