The life and work of an experimental artist

 

The artist Robert Irwin, deep into his 80s when some of the documentary Robert Irwin: A Desert of Pure Feeling was made, is now 95. Irwin's career spans work from paint on canvas to large-scale installations that have earned him a place among artists whose work is classed as "experimental."  Perhaps taking a cue from the plain-talking Irwin, director Jennifer Lane takes a straightforward approach to Irwin's life and artistic evolution. Often supporting himself with money won at race tracks, Irwin eventually abandoned studio work and moved into the world, where he created art in response to natural environments or built structures, art that almost had the feeling of an ambush. Considered by some critics to be one of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, Irwin famously designed the Central Garden at the J. Paul Getty museum in Los Angeles. The movie's title comes from a comment by Russian artist Kazimir Malevich, who described a famous white on white painting as “a desert of pure feeling.” The movie culminates with Irwin's transformation in 2016 of an abandoned military hospital in Marfa, Texas, turning it into an evanescent light display. Lane emphasizes Irwin's idea that the point of art is experience and that experience shifts and transforms along with changes in time, light, and weather. Art isn't about permanence; it's about transcendence in any given moment. The movie tends to a lag a bit but creates a platform for any one interested in thinking about the nature of art and perception or simply wanting to meet a man who seems to have spent his life going his own way.

*Irwin died on Wednesday, October 25, 2023. He was 95 years old. Here's The New York Times obituary. All the more reason to see A Desert of Pure Feeling.