Sunday, November 18, 2007. "Seeing is Forgetting The Name of the Thing One Sees." Back in 1982 I bought the book just for the title. It's sub-title is, "A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin."
So today I finally got around to taking pictures of his installation on the UW campus: Nine Spaces Nine Trees. The trees are set like a tic-tac-toe board--three x three with purple scrim dividing the trees. A round table and bench encircles the base of each tree.
The panel outside the installation offers this: "The maze-like fence structure is either very transparent or very opaque depending on your position inside or outside the piece. The trees add another layer of complexity--dense in the spring and summer, open in the winter. These multiple layers of structure make for garden spaces that are at once both very public and very private."
Irwin is probably best known for creating the gardens at the Getty Museum. About his book, he has said, "It's about trying to get people to perceive how they perceive."
In a telephone interview with Jori Finkel of the "New York Times", he said, "In a way it's a simple thing. For the next week try the best you can to pay attention to sounds. You will start hearing all these sounds coming in. Once you let them in, you've already done the first and most critical thing, you've honored that information by including it. And by doing that you've actually changed the world. It's nothing mystical, but you've re-defined the world for yourself. "
I think it's way cool to have an Irwin piece so close at hand; I like just knowing it's there. Cheers.
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