Robert Whitman, who was among the many group of artists that pioneered the Happenings of the late Fifties and early 60s, has died. He died on Friday (19 January) in his dwelling in New York’s Hudson Valley, and his demise was introduced by his longtime gallery Tempo. He was 88 years previous.
The now-seminal Happenings——which Whitman carried out alongside the likes of Allan Kaprow, Claes Oldenburg, Jim Dine, Purple Grooms and others—have been among the many first artworks to convey dwell components extra sometimes related to theatre to the world of galleries and non-profit visible artwork areas, and they’re largely thought of to have been precursors to up to date efficiency artwork. Whitman’s need to pursue his unconventional inventive visions additionally led him to co-create the collective Experiments in Artwork and Expertise (EAT), which he co-founded with Robert Rauschenberg with the assistance of Bell Phone Laboratories engineers Fred Waldhauer, Billy Kluver and Julie Martin.
Whitman was born right into a rich household in New York Metropolis in 1935, and his early childhood was spent on the North Shore of Lengthy Island. His father died when he was ten years previous, at which level his mom moved him and his youthful brother to Englewood, New Jersey. From a younger age, Whitman was drawn to dwell efficiency and the inherently incalculable and distinctive occurrences potential solely when audiences and performers share an area.
Robert Whitman, Window, 1963 © Robert Whitman, courtesy Tempo Gallery
“My very first expertise of artwork was seeing the clown Emmett Kelly within the circus,” Whitman advised The Brooklyn Rail in 2003. “It was like a miracle. I saved wanting round, questioning, ‘Everyone’s wanting however they don’t seem to be like, seeing God.’ So, that kind of mounted me proper then and there.” Whitman was six on the time, and the efficiency that he witnessed was Kelly’s gag by which he would faux to comb a highlight below a rug.
Whitman initially got down to change into a playwright, finding out literature at Rutgers College, the place the college included Kaprow, Robert Watt and George Brecht. In 1959, the first-ever Occurring—Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 Components—happened on the Reuben Gallery, and Whitman was invited to take part. The next yr, Whitman’s first main efficiency, American Moon, additionally happened at Reuben Gallery.
Whitman’s 1964 work Lavatory Sink, now within the assortment of Madrid’s Reina Sofia Museum, was an early instance of his merging pursuits in efficiency, expertise and blurring the traces between viewers and participant. In it, footage of a girl going by her morning routine is projected onto a rest room mirror; the footage bounces off of the mirror and onto an adjoining wall, however the viewer is implicated by the entanglement of their very own reflection.
Robert Whitman, Wavy Purple Line, 1967 © Robert Whitman, courtesy Tempo Gallery
In 1965, Prune Flat, his best-known work, debuted. Prune Flat included each dwell actors and projections, and would go on to be offered at a number of Off Broadway theaters. In 1967, Whitman had his first solo exhibition at Tempo Gallery; titled Wavy Purple Line, the present consisted of a spinning pink laser that may dance throughout the partitions and that Whitman created in collaboration with Eric Rawson, an engineer with Bell Labs.
“Bob was a real pioneer. His Happenings blurred the road between dreaming and waking life. Someway, he made the unbelievable actual,” Arne Glimcher, founding father of Tempo Gallery, mentioned in an announcement. “From the start, I used to be deeply intrigued by his imaginative and prescient, and I remained astounded by his brilliance over the course of seven many years of our friendship.”
Although he eschewed standard supplies, which frequently meant forgoing standard industrial success—it’s tougher to promote a multimedia efficiency piece than it’s a portray or sculpture, for instance—Whitman stayed true to his imaginative and prescient for the remainder of his profession, discovering properties for his work with longstanding bastions of experimental artwork, such because the Dia Artwork Basis, amongst others.
