Artwork Details
54 (diam.) in.
Accession NumberGift of the Alliance of the Indianapolis Museum of Art
CopyrightArtist; (Pace Gallery New York, New York); private collection, December 1970; (Pace Gallery, New York); Gilman Paper Collection, New York 1974; (Christie’s New York), Minimal and Conceptual Art from the Collection of Gilman Paper, 5 May 1987, lot 52; (Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, Illinois); purchased by the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana in 1988
Untitled belongs to a series of spray-painted aluminum and cast acrylic disks that Robert Irwin created between 1966 and 1969. The sculpture consists of a central, slightly convex acrylic disk bisected by a horizontal three-inch-wide gray line, suspended by a concealed clear Plexiglas cylinder protruding nearly two feet from the wall. The work is cross-lit by four incandescent lights, casting four overlapping shadows. Irwin's use of light and space makes the sculpture appear to float, and deliberately incorporates these halo-like shadows as part of the artwork.
Robert Irwin read the perceptual philosophy of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, which emphasizes that perception requires an interaction between the body and an object in the world. The disk series demonstrates an important moment in Robert Irwin's development as an artist, as he moved away from abstract expressionist painting to engage with light, space, and multisensory perception.
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