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ROBERT WHITMAN 61 ROBERT ROBERT WHITMAN 61 ROBERT WHITMAN 61 October 26 – December 21, 2018 510 West 25th Street, New York 5 Robert Whitman: Theater of Images Adam Harrison Levy If you expect Robert Whitman to talk about his directions, Kaprow opened a door for Whitman. art, forget it. He’d rather discuss the Masi lugs “You didn’t have to be concerned about these things on the frames of a racing bike, the role of clowns lasting forever,” Whitman recalls. “You could be in Fellini films, or his local hardware store. “Too sloppy, and you could make work that decayed and much thinking,” he says, as we pull into the park- fell apart.” In the late ’50s, he would sometimes ing lot in front of Joann, the local craft store near leave drawings on his garage floor for a few weeks Warwick, New York, where he lives. “I’m a great so that tire marks and oil drippings would add to believer in instinct.” their composition. In Untitled (Checkerboard) (1957; p. 42), he used Scotch tape and aluminum I had asked him about the role of impermanence foil, everyday materials that are fragile and transi- in the work of Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, and tory. Some sixty years later, the tape is brittle and Jim Dine, fellow artists who had also played pivotal the foil has lost some of its luster. roles in the downtown art scene of New York in the Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Whitman at the The Menil Collection, 10th Anniversary celebration, Houston, 1997 late 1950s and early ’60s. Instead, he is intent on This is also true of the sets he would later build for buying fabric for his reconstruction of One Thread, his incandescent theater pieces American Moon a work that was first shown in 1970. He gets out of (1960) and Flower (1963). They seemed purposely his car and heads across the parking lot. ephemeral. American Moon, Whitman recalls, was “like a backwards filming of something that had Whitman says he likes to use materials that are crumbled and was growing up again, reconstructing “rough, cheap, and dirty.” Melissa Rachleff, the itself out of all these boards and fragile parts.” author of Inventing Downtown, tells me that they result in “fugitive artwork,” work that isn’t meant Susanne De Maria, one of the original performers to be permanent, an aesthetic he picked up from in Flower, also recalls the transitory delicacy of Kaprow, who had been his art professor at Rutgers Whitman’s work. In the performance, she wore a University. Although their work evolved in different satin costume that she buttoned and unbuttoned 6 7 to reveal different layers, each a distinct stratum Unfazed by his odd request, she flops the bolt over Asbel believes that this is the element that distin- which they were set. It was the physical context for of color. At one point, a sack fell from the ceiling as if rolling a dead fish in flour. She measures out guishes Whitman’s work from what other artists the images he created. In American Moon, audi- and rags were violently ripped from it. It’s a the fabric, cuts it, and unceremoniously dumps it were making at that time. ence members sat across from one another in shocking image. But the original sack has van- in a white plastic bag. six tunnels resembling mini theaters, each with a ished. “I mean, who would save a bag of rags?” Whitman studied English as an undergraduate at 16mm film projected onto flaps that would later roll she says with a laugh. “Careful,” says Whitman as she hands it over. Rutgers and wanted to be a playwright. But he up. The tunnels faced one another with a circle for “That’s going to be a work of art.” found theater at that time to be deathly boring. The performance in the middle. When the flaps rolled Rachleff believes that Whitman intentionally made cultural energy was elsewhere. “The most vital up, the beam from the projectors would fall on the his work to be experienced in the moment and * * * * * stuff in the arts in those days was Abstract Expres- audience on the other side, turning them into the that it wasn’t meant to last. It was an aesthetic, sionism and painting,” he says. So he gravitated to equivalent of film images. Action then took place as well as an ethic, of impermanence. There was Whitman’s reputation as an artist hasn’t solidified the art department and took a class in art history in the center space while the noise of actors’ feet a sense, she says, that if “you just sneezed on it, into a coherent narrative yet. Depending on whom taught by Kaprow, who encouraged Whitman. He walking on platforms came from overhead. Toward it looked like everything would just get destroyed you talk to, he is the first artist to use film with began spending time with fellow art student Lucas the end, the audience would come out of their and disappear.” Which is exactly why Whitman and sculpture, he is a pioneer of theatrical performance Samaras as well as with George Segal, who, tunnels and gather in the middle. The lights would I are walking into Joann. The thread that was One who did away with linguistic narrative, he is an although not a student, lived close by and taught a turn off and then come back on, and a performer Thread had disappeared. innovator who saw the potential of collaborations drawing class. Whitman started making things in (Samaras) would be magically suspended above between art and technology, and he makes draw- the studio. “You just built the stuff you wanted to the audience, frozen in mid-flight on a swing, like a ings, sculptures, and prints like a traditional artist. do,” he recalls. The art department was miniscule, circus performer caught in a strobe. * * * * * Whitman, like his namesake, contains multitudes. the resources were thin (he would later say that the Joann is a suburban craft store for people who like art library had fewer books than most artists now Whitman was liberating his work from the con- to make things, such as baby clothes, quilts, and His mutability is a blessing and a curse. It has have in their own personal possession), but it was a straints of traditional theater. The physical impact scrapbooks. The store smells of potpourri. Whitman allowed him to move deftly between genres without fever storm of passionate conversation and argu- of the tunnels, the flaps, and the placement of the looks out of place. He’s dressed in jeans, with a being categorized. Part of the problem is that art ment that would later migrate to New York City and audience informed the experience of what was gray, long-sleeved shirt over a light blue T-shirt. historical classifications haven’t caught up with energize the art scene there. being seen. This was radical at the time. He’s wearing Ray-Ban sunglasses and a day’s him yet, even in this age of interdisciplinary studies. worth of stubble. Is he best understood under the rubric of perfor- Kaprow introduced Whitman to that New York This attention to the use of space came to fruition mance? Or as part of the lineage of theater? Is his scene, first by inviting him to show at the Hansa in a much later work, Light Touch (1976). In this use of technology and collaboration with engineers Gallery in January 1959 and then by including him theater piece, performed on a loading dock, the “We’re looking for muslin,” says Whitman offhandedly. his defining artistic mode? How do you integrate in the groundbreaking 18 Happenings in 6 Parts audience sat on the loading platform looking A slightly puzzled greeter points us toward a far objects, like his sculptures, Cinema Pieces, and that fall. Whitman responded in 1960 with a torrent toward the entrance. The truck noises reached wall. We pass spools of satin ribbons, jars of glitter drawings, with his other work? He’s not a Pop art- of creativity, producing his first theater work, Small the audience from disorienting directions until the glue, and some lime-green calico drapery. Whitman ist, as others of his generation, such as Oldenburg Cannon, followed by Duet for a Small Smell, E.G., doors of the loading bay opened, mercury vapor zeroes in on the muslin. He fingers the fabric with and Dine, have been labeled, and he’s certainly not and culminating in American Moon, which was street lights started to glow, and a truck backed expert delicacy. a conceptual artist. He occupies a no man’s land of presented at the Reuben Gallery. These works into the bay. The space of the street became part his own creation. shared many of the characteristics of Oldenburg, of the piece. “Bob comes to the environment with a “We want stuff that’s unbleached,” he says, moving Dine, and Red Grooms: immersive environments, poetic agenda,” says Asbel. “And he uses his poetic down the row. He quickly finds the one he wants, Jim Asbel, who worked for Whitman as an assistant non-narrative structures, and an emphasis on agenda with that environment.” hauls the bolt off the rack, and carries it over to a in the ’70s, struggles to define the arc of Whitman’s powerful imagery. bored-looking shop assistant. “How much do you career. Unlike Oldenburg or Robert Rauschenberg, In News, which was first conceived in 1972, people want?” she asks. “Enough for one long thread,” he says, Whitman didn’t start from an art-making What was distinctive about Whitman’s pieces was were asked to use pay phones to call into the New Whitman says.