Irwin thought about for a millisecond and said that art was in the viewer.  I was a little shaken. Here is a man who has devoted his life to art and he is telling me that not only is art not within himself, but also that the art is not even in what he makes.  I did not know what to think.  In retrospect, I imagine that my experience might have been similar to what people have experienced with Zen masters and their koans.  The purpose of the koan is to tie the student’s mental processes in knots so that in order to develop answer they would have to change their worldview.

I remember I struggled with his answer for a long time. How can art exist in the viewer? It was the opposite of everything that I had been taught.  I was taught that art existed in the object, often in the form of the object in one way or another.  When we go into a museum we are often presented works that exist beyond time, and the museum makes it clear that it is the art that exists in the cases and not in the viewers.  It gives us the impression that art can exist by itself and outside of time. Galleries often try to sell us the physical object.  They are definitely not trying to sell something that already exists in ourselves.  The same would be true for auction houses.  Why would Irwin insist that art is in the viewer when the rest of the world is telling us something completely the opposite?

I won’t pretend to explain it as Irwin does.  I will explain it as I have slowly come to understand it.  Surprisingly, I think that we will find other radically different artists have been saying the same thing for a long time.  If you know your art history, one might think that he is paraphrasing some version of what Duchamp declared when he said that the viewer completed his work. In Duchamp’s case, it suggests that there might be a 50/50 relationship between the work and the viewer. The artist makes the work, and the viewer takes away whatever he can from the experience of the work. In this sense the work would be neither what the artist made nor the viewer in isolation, but would be an invisible third at the moment of contact between viewer and object to create a singularity of viewer/object together.  I understand what Duchamp was getting at, but I do not think that was what Irwin was saying.

Duchamp is still leaving room for art as an object.  His art is still something that can exist in isolation until in comes in to contact with a viewer.  In his definition, there is still plenty of room for the aura of the object and the magic of the hand of the artist.  I think that Irwin was saying something more radical, simpler and more, for lack of a better word, situational.  I think that Irwin was saying, and he has amply demonstrated this over the course of his career, is that he could also make art without the object.  This is very important because it is not just the object that would be under attack, but also the value system that reinforces its dominance.

After talking with Irwin, I had more than a few sleepless nights as, like the person who receives the koan from a master, the world and art as I understood it slowly unraveled.  There were times when I believed that he had to be wrong.  Or maybe he was in some way mistaken.  Or he had misunderstood the question.  Perhaps I had mumbled something at a critical moment and disrupted his train of thought.  I just did not understand how he could say that art exists in the viewer. Objects are great.  Objects are beautiful.  Don’t objects speak to us?  Why shouldn’t art exist in the object?  Who is he to say?  If it doesn’t exist in the object, couldn’t it at least exist in the artist? After all, isn’t it the artist who makes things to begin with?  Isn’t the object the culmination of the artist’s ideas, inspirations, education, value system, preferences, aesthetics and all the rest of it?

I think Irwin would say very gently that while all of that is true, that is not where art is.  In a way all of those things only limit the artist rather than freeing him to engage with people.  There are some interesting ways in which I had come to understand that maybe, art might exist in the viewer after all.  

I remembered and tried understand why some of my own experiences with art have had such a fundamental importance to my own life. Standing on the edge of two great gashes in Mormon Mesa in 100 degree heat, completely exhausted and exhilarated at the same time. Michael Heizer had created two giant holes that align with one another on opposite sides of the mesa in his work Double Negative.  As a viewer, it was my job to traverse and explore the space and begin to understand the way that work is completely integrated of the environment. As I viewer, I was supposed to listen to what Heizer was saying through his work. To be come of aware of the work is by necessity to become aware environment and your place within it.  Everything becomes seamlessly interconnected.  Heizer created the work. He provided the intention and chose the environment in which the interaction could take place but like being in love, my experiences and awareness remain my own.

One of the first times I was at the Chinati Foundation in the late 90’s, I remember requesting to see the 100 mill Aluminum pieces again after the end of the tour. Rather escorting us into the space with a guide,  the docent handed us the keys and said “Don’t touch anything and bring back the keys when you are finished.”  To be left alone and to be able to walk through those spaces accompanied only by our own thoughts and the sounds of the West Texas sun upon the metal of the work was probably one of the most important experiences of my life. Donald Judd defined the space and the work.  As a viewer, I tried to be a good listener and to try to understand what Judd’s intentions were for the work not in an analytical way but in the space as a whole, as an entire field all at once.  I attempted to open myself to the experience of being aware in that space. But still, my experiences remain my own.  Judd was the facilitator of that experience.  He devoted a tremendous amount of resourses, material and intention to create that space.  As a viewer who traveled half way across the country to see the work in person, it was my job to open myself to what it had to say.

Sometime after struggling with these ideas, I was shocked to read the painter Francis Bacon saying almost exactly the same thing. Bacon was talking about how he feels when he is looking at a Velasquez painting and the sensations he experiences when he is looking at the painting return him back to his own life, full of energy and more vigor.  His interaction with the work literally made him feel more alive.  Those sensations already existed in Bacon; he did not get them from the painting.  If anything it was the work that unlocked the sensations already in him.  I think that Irwin would agree with that statement.  He might even say that the role of art is to unlock those sensations that are already in us.  Maybe the role of art is to remind us of the awareness of what it is like to be human.

I found this quote of Francis Bacon by David Sylvester in 1963, 1966 and 1979 online.  It says pretty much the same thing as the one I remember reading.  It is available on the Guardian website at http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2007/sep/13/greatinterviews

  One wants to do this thing of just walking along the edge of the precipice, and in Velasquez it's a very, very extraordinary thing that he has been able to keep it so near to what we call illustration and at the same time so deeply unlock the greatest and deepest things that man can feel.

Bacon’s experience had nothing to do with Velasquez’s own intentions for the painting.  I think that it would also be presumptuous to say that Bacon in some way completed the Velasquez painting in the way that Duchamp suggested. The sensations were already there, and it was the interaction with the intention of another artist, in this case Velasquez, and his painting that unlocked them.

These are interactions that happen all of the time in art, but we have been taught that the value of the experience is derived from the object and not from ourselves.  We are told that we did not make the experience, the art did.  If it was not the object, then it was the environment of the experience that made it possible.  Irwin is saying something different.  He is saying that these sensations, this awareness, already exists within us, and it is the privilege/opportunity of the artist to create a situation that under rare circumstances might allow us to become more aware of ourselves.

The shift from art-object to art-viewer also implies a subtle but profoundly important shift in the role of the artist.  It suggests that rather than concentrating on making objects, an artist’s skills and perceptions can also be used to find new ways to communicate and interact with the viewer.

I finally understood why Irwin had left his studio.  It was not necessary anymore because it was no longer the only way forward.  There were other ways to make art. It was the situation that was important – the circumstance and not the object. Irwin assigned himself to find the most efficient way to communicate and interact with the viewer in a given set of circumstances.  Every situation, every circumstance, would by necessity suggest a different answer.  It was a whole new way of making and understanding art.