Whitman's expanded theater: a traveling survey of works by vanguard cross-media artist Robert Whitman offers film-and-object installations from the 1960s, along with some never-exhibited drawings from the '70s - Biography

Art in America, Jan, 2004 by Edward Leffingwell

Robert Whitman remains at the vanguard of a remarkable generation of artists whose work in theater and cross-media installation changed the very nature of what is considered art. Since the 1960s, during which he helped precipitate the explosion of time-based art, Whitman has remained committed to a belief in its power to engage new audiences. Today, there seems to be nothing dated about his work in theater or in film. Benefiting from access to archives and new technology, Dia:Chelsea's long-running exhibition "Robert Whitman: Playback," (1) which closes in New York this month prior to a European tour, provides the opportunity to reconsider key elements of his work. The show also offers an unprecedented chance to adopt Whitman's lens to view the production of certain contemporary technology-based and performance artists, among them Tony Oursler, Patty Chang, Janine Antoni, Ann Hamilton, Sam Taylor-Wood, Bill Viola and Marco Brambilla.

At the tail end of the 1950s, Whitman exhibited at the ICA, Boston, and began to show regularly at the artist-run Hansa and Reuben galleries in New York. His assemblages, constructions and collages became an integral part of a collaborative ferment of performances, environments and situations, with time and space as the defining factors.

Whitman, who had begun his studies at Rutgers in playwriting, produced and participated in Happenings, performances and theater events in the company of Robert Rauschenberg, Claes Oldenburg, Patty Oldenburg, Walter De Maria, Suzanne De Maria, George Segal, Red Grooms, Lucas Samaras, Jim Dine, Allan Kaprow and Simone Forti. In 1960, a year of extraordinary activity for Whitman, Patty Oldenburg performed his first theater work, Small Cannon, at Reuben; he presented Duel for Small Smell at Judson Church as part of Claes Oldenburg's Ray Gun Festival; and Dine, Patty Oldenburg and Samaras appeared in EG at Reuben. His last production that year, American Moon, also at Reuben, was the first to be scored so that it could be restaged. George Bretherton, Forti, Samaras and Clifford Smith engaged in a series of actions, watched by an audience divided into small groups in separate "tunnels" leading to the performance space so that each group watched from a different perspective.

In 1963, in a rented space on Great Jones Street in Lower Manhattan, Whitman and Walter De Maria presented a series of exhibitions, performances and films, including a screening of Joseph Cornell's collection of silent films. In 1963 and 1964, Whitman created a handful of sculptures consisting of domestic objects animated by projected or reflected silent-film sequences of activities that are essentially private. Then he stepped through the performative doorway into a new arena of experimentation and growth.

In December 1965, he presented Prune, Flat, with Lucinda Childs, Forti and Mimi Stark, as part of the Expanded Cinema Festival at Jonas Mekas's Film-Makers' Cinematheque. (2) Prune Flat enjoyed an off-Broadway run in 1966 and, benefiting from a detailed script, it has continued to enjoy a life of its own, becoming Whitman's first classic.

In 1966, the Bell Labs physicist Billy Kluver organized the pioneering "Nine Evenings of Theater and Engineering" at the 69th Regiment Armory, with Whitman, Rauschenberg, John Cage, Nam June Paik, Merce Cunningham and other artists in collaboration with nearly 30 engineers from Bell Labs. Whitman produced the large-scale cinema piece Two Holes of Water No. 2, an assembly of automobiles wrapped in plastic sheets to be used as projection booths for video and film images and sound.

Later that year, Kluver, Rauschenberg and Whitman, along with engineer Fred Waldhauer, founded Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) to foster collaborations between artists and engineers. From 1968 to 1970, Whitman worked with a team that grew to 63 engineers, artists and scientists to produce a major commission--a high-tech environment for the Pepsi Pavilion at the Osaka Expo '70. Whitman designed the floor and ceiling of a light-and-mirror environment. Pianist and composer David Tudor did the sound system. Fueled by that experience, Whitman helped organize artists' radio and television programs and continued to participate in Happenings, multimedia exhibitions and theater works.

From early April until mid-May 1976, the Dia Art Foundation presented "Robert Whitman: Theater Works 1960-1976" at 589 Washington St. in Manhattan's meatpacking district. Whitman was an important figure in Dia's early days and was one of several artists the organization supported in a sustained fashion between 1974 and 1983. (3) The program for the '76 show included restagings of American Moon and Prune Flat, the first presentation of Light Touch, and a projection piece, Untitled (Film Images, 1960-1976). Last fall, Light Touch and Prune Flat were restaged at both Dia:Beacon and Dia:Chelsea [see sidebars], while Untitled (Film Images) is a key part of the current "Playback" exhibition. Whitman continues to create new performance pieces, and Ghost (2002), which was not part of this exhibition, was presented not long ago at PaceWildenstein in New York [see sidebar]. It incorporates many of the devices introduced in the earlier works.