Lawrence Weschler
Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
Expanded Edition
Over Thirty Years of Conversations with Robert Irwin
$50.00, £34.95 hardcover
9780520256088
Available Now
$24.95, £16.95 paperback
9780520256095
Available Now
336 pages, 6 x 8 inches, 51 color and 36 b/w photographs
February 2009, Available worldwide
Also in: American Art
February 2009, Available worldwide
Also in: American Art
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.
"'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
"Taken together, Weschler's two books [True to Life and Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees] amount to an engaging argument about visual culture and its possibilities. They shift the reader several levels above the peevish bickering that often deadens cultural discussion and remind us that contemporary art, on some of its best days, draws us into the midst of debates that are wonderfully creative and crucially important while nevertheless unresolvable."—The National Post
"Irwin is one of the great artists and artistic innovators of our day. He is also one of the most eloquent. And he was fortunate enough to find his Boswell. Back in the 18th century, pioneering biographer James Boswell preserved writer Samuel Johnson's marvelous style of conversation. And while we have many other means now of preserving someone's words, Irwin's acquire a special life in Lawrence Weschler's magnetic (now expanded) biography."—San Diego Union-tribune
"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."—Frieze
"[A] superb book . . . . Weschler's focus is on process, on Irwin's particular pursuit of presence, with its discipline and its drifting, its digressions and its obsessions, its naivete and its subtlety." —Portfolio
"[Seeing Is Forgetting] has convinced more young people to become artists than the Velvet Underground has created rockers."—New York Times
"A milestone first biography of an important California artist. Better yet, it is a lively narrative which . . . manages to be about something deeper than its entertaining surface."—Los Angeles Times
"Taken together, Weschler's two books [True to Life and Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees] amount to an engaging argument about visual culture and its possibilities. They shift the reader several levels above the peevish bickering that often deadens cultural discussion and remind us that contemporary art, on some of its best days, draws us into the midst of debates that are wonderfully creative and crucially important while nevertheless unresolvable."—The National Post
"Irwin is one of the great artists and artistic innovators of our day. He is also one of the most eloquent. And he was fortunate enough to find his Boswell. Back in the 18th century, pioneering biographer James Boswell preserved writer Samuel Johnson's marvelous style of conversation. And while we have many other means now of preserving someone's words, Irwin's acquire a special life in Lawrence Weschler's magnetic (now expanded) biography."—San Diego Union-tribune
"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."—Frieze
"[A] superb book . . . . Weschler's focus is on process, on Irwin's particular pursuit of presence, with its discipline and its drifting, its digressions and its obsessions, its naivete and its subtlety." —Portfolio
"[Seeing Is Forgetting] has convinced more young people to become artists than the Velvet Underground has created rockers."—New York Times
"A milestone first biography of an important California artist. Better yet, it is a lively narrative which . . . manages to be about something deeper than its entertaining surface."—Los Angeles Times
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
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
Modern & Contemporary Art Bestsellers
