In his non-hierarchical approach to art making, Robert Irwin questions how art is made. In the process, he seems to come down on both sides of the Modernism versus Postmodernism debate. Insofar as he wants to advance the avant‐garde tenets of modern art, he can be thought of as a modernist. But insofar as he denies Modernism’s claims for transcendental status, he can be thought of as a postmodernist. Irwin’s light and space environments, in particular, are conditioned by their basic attachments to their surroundings. They reveal the commonplace, but largely overlooked, richness of visual perception. By encouraging his viewers to open their eyes, Irwin wants them to engage in an act of looking, one that manipulates the basic syntax of seeing. This paper discusses Irwin’s contributions to the art of his time (basically the transitional period between Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism) using as an example a light and space environment he created as the backdrop for the “First National Symposium on Habitability.” This work was later reprised in 1980 as an independent installation. These works are examined to show how Irwin’s art displaces modernist notions of authoritative (and authoritarian) quality with postmodernist ideas of direct (and demotic) value.

• 크레이그 애드칵(아이오아 대학교 미술사 교수) | Craig Adcock