Robert Whitman

Robert Whitman
Whitman in 2010
Born	(1935-05-23)May 23, 1935 New York City, U.S.
Died	January 19, 2024(2024-01-19)(aged 88) Warwick, New York,U.S.
Nationality	American
Education	Rutgers University Columbia University
Notable work	Experiments in Art and Technology
Movement	Performance art
Spouses	Mia Lahanas ​ (m.1956⁠–⁠1961)​ Simone Forti ​ (m.1962⁠–⁠1966)​ Sylvia Palacios Whitman ​ ​ (m.1968)​
Children	3

Robert Whitman(May 23, 1935 – January 19, 2024) was an American artist best known for his seminal theater pieces of the early 1960s combining visual and sound images, actors, film, slides, and evocative props in environments of his own making. From the late 1960s on he worked with new technologies, and his latest work incorporatedcellphones.

Background

Whitman was born inManhattan,New York City,on May 23, 1935, and moved toEnglewood, New Jersey,at the age of 10, after his father's death.He attended the local public schools and the Englewood School for Boys (now part ofDwight-Englewood School).Whitman studied literature atRutgers Universityfrom 1953 to 1957 andart historyatColumbia Universityin 1958. He was represented by thePace Galleryin New York.

Whitman died at his home inWarwick, New York,on January 19, 2024, at the age of 88.

Theater works

Whitman was a member of the group of visual artists -Allan Kaprow,Red Grooms,Jim Dine,andClaes Oldenburg- who in the early 1960s presentedtheaterpieces on theLower East SideinManhattan.Whitman presented more than 40 theater pieces in the United States and abroad, includingAmerican Moon,E.G. and Mouthat the Rueben Gallery.Night Time Skywas his contribution to the First New York Theater Rally in New York in 1965;Prune Flatwas first presented at the Cinematheque in New York in 1965 and has been performed numerous times since.

In 1966, Whitman was one of the 10 New York artists who worked withBilly Klüverand more than 30 engineers and scientists fromBell Telephone Laboratoriesto create works that incorporated new technology for9 Evenings: Theatre and Engineering,a series ofperformance artworkspresented October 13–23 in 1966 at the69th Regiment ArmoryinNew York City.For this piece,Two Holes of Water- 3,Whitman used seven automobiles on the floor of the Armory, from which were projected film, over-the-air television programs, and closed-circuit television projections of live performances and actions, including images from one of the first fiber-optic miniature video cameras.

A retrospective,Robert Whitman: Theater Works, 1960–1976was held in 1976 sponsored by theDia Art Foundationand presented six earlier works and the premiere ofLight Touch.His theater works have been presented at the Galerie Maeght Festival in France, Contemporary Arts Museum,Houston,Texas,Moderna Museet,Stockholm;Walker Art Center,Vera List Art Center atMIT,and many more.Ghost,his most recent theater performance, was staged at thePace Wildenstein Galleryin New York City in 2002.

In 2003 theDia Art Foundation,in New York presented,Playback,a large-scale retrospective exhibition of Whitman’s works. The exhibition traveled toPorto, Portugal,and opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art inBarcelona,Spain in September 2005. A major book,Playback,a comprehensive study of his work, accompanied this exhibition.

In the fall of 2004, Whitman presented a theater performance,Antenna,inLeeds,England, sponsored by Lumens, as part of the New Media Festival there.

Sculpture and installations

Whitman collaborated with engineers on installations and works that incorporate new technology: laser sculptures, includingSolid Red Line,in which a red line draws itself around the walls of a room and then erases itselfandPon,a sound-activated metallizedPET filmmirror installation shown at TheJewish Museumin New York City in 1969.

His long collaboration with optics scientist John Forkner began with a mirror, light, and sound installation for theArt and Technologyexhibition at theLos Angeles County Museum of Artin 1971. They developed an optical system that allowed real images to float in space, to appear and disappear in an environment made up of a wall array of 6-inch corner reflectors in which the visitors saw multiple images of themselves.

Whitman was one of the co-founders ofExperiments in Art and Technologyalong with engineersBilly KlüverandFred Waldhauerand artistRobert Rauschenberg- a project to provide contemporary artists with access to new technology as it developed in research institutions and laboratories. Whitman was one of the core artists for the Pepsi Pavilion at Expo '70,OsakaJapan, a project administered byE.A.T.One of the main features of the interior of the Pavilion was the central performance space in a 90 ft diameter 120 degree spherical mirror made of aluminized reflective PET film, which produced real images of the visitors hanging upside down in space.

Significant one-person exhibitions of Whitman's sculpture and installation pieces include shows at TheMuseum of Modern Artin New York, The Hudson River Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and Thielska Galleriet, Stockholm. Whitman enjoyed one person gallery exhibitions at PaceWildenstein in New York, and his work has been included in many group exhibitions.

Telecommunications projects

Whitman, working withExperiments in Art and Technology,E.A.T., in the early 1970s, developed and participated in a number of innovative communications projects: - Anand Project: he was part of an interdisciplinary team to develop methods for instructional television programming for rural Indian villages; - Children and Communications, open environments for children to work with a variety of communication equipment; - Telex: Q&A: a worldwide person-to-person question and answer opportunity usingtelexequipment in New York, Stockholm, Ahmedabad, India, and Tokyo; - Artists and Television, artists’ programming on New York cable channels.

In 1972, Whitman produced his first telephone piece, NEWS, in which participants, usingpay phones,called in reports which were broadcast live over radio stationWBAI.NEWS was performed later in Houston, Minneapolis, and other cities over a two- or three-year period.

A later performance inLeeds,England in 2002, utilized cell phones, and the calls were broadcast in real time on large speakers in a public square in the town. A recording of the performance was made available by the sponsor,Lumens,atUbuweb.

In the summer of 2005, Whitman presentedLocal Report,a video cell phone project.

Awards

Whitman received many awards, including aGuggenheim Fellowship(1976); Creative Artists Public Service Grant; Citation of Fine Arts,Brandeis University;and a Creative Arts AwardXeroxCompany Grant.

See also

• Happenings
• Expanded Cinema
• Fluxus at Rutgers University
• Experiments in Art and Technology

External links

• The Pace Gallery
• Cellphone Performance (2004) on Ubuweb
• Local Reportwebsite
• Essay onPlaybackexhibition (2003)
• Brooklyn Rail Robert Whitman with Joan Waltemath
• Robert Whitmandiscography atDiscogs
• Robert WhitmanatIMDb