Beautifully written (sometimes language is even difficult for a non-native reader), this book is really a deep journey into the work of one greatly important - and inspiring - artist. Deep, witty and engaging, this is really a revealing learning experience about perception and the role of art for everyday's life. ( )

Title adapted from Paul Valery, as noted in the 1982 edition (last page): "To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees."

A spare, artfully structured account of Robert Irwin's career. It reads like an offhand front porch conversation, but Weschler introduces ideas with satisfying heft every few pages. The overall effect is a serious examination of art history and purveyors of art in a deceptively light framework. Were I drafting a syllabus for an Introduction to Phenomenology, I'd be tempted to use this as the first book we read, then address in depth the various themes it raises at later points in the course.

Weschler weaves in references to ontology and epistemology when appropriate, and never obtrusively. Irwin's examinations of perception and presence (which Weschler sometimes refers to as Irwin's research) build on themselves and raise these metaphysical questions naturally, so Weschler mostly stands back and lets Irwin do the talking.

At the same time, their conversation provides a nice summary of Western art since the Renaissance, and a somewhat more nuanced overview of modern art, with sketches of the East and West Coast art scenes along the way. I'm not well versed in art, but have heard of various artists, schools, styles, and historic periods enough to confuse me. Weschler manages to fit these stray pieces into a comfortable frame without seeming to make overly strong claims about any of them.

Irwin's maturation is equally interesting, evolving from a preternatural "technician" to someone challenging himself at each step, finally reinventing himself as an artist when he decides to leave the studio and its emphasis upon making "art objects" rather than art. To a certain degree, Irwin's post-Whitney career path seems to be something of a cop-out. Except that by that point in the book, I'm persuaded that Irwin is driven by integrity more than anything else, certainly not being safe or staying in a comfort zone. I'm interested to read some of Irwin's essays on his artistic and philosophical perspective.

"What I'm really trying to do with these things is draw their attention to, my attention to looking at and seeing all of those things that have been going on all along but which previously have been too incidental or too meaningless to really seriously enter into our visual structure, our picture of the world." (183, quoting Irwin)
"It was as if Irwin were saying, 'I can paint this square here at Fifth Avenue and Forty-second Street, and doing so creates a remarkable perceptual space, but why bother? There are hundreds of shadow squares just as remarkable all up and down the block. The point is to attend to *them*.'" (186) ( )

My Review: ( )