Robert Wilson, a visionary artist finest identified for his extremely visible and stylised method to theatrical performances, has died, aged 83. In line with an announcement launched by the Watermill Middle, the humanities organisation he based in Water Mill, New York, Wilson died at his house there on Thursday (31 July) following “a quick however acute sickness”.
“Whereas dealing with his analysis with clear eyes and willpower, he nonetheless felt compelled to maintain working and creating proper up till the very finish,” the assertion notes. “His works for the stage, on paper, sculptures and video portraits, in addition to The Watermill Middle, will endure as Robert Wilson’s inventive legacy.”
Wilson was one of the vital critically distinguished and distinctive administrators and playwrights of the previous half-century. His unique productions—together with the “silent opera” Deafman Look (1970) and his canonic, epic collaboration with the composer Philip Glass, Einstein on the Seashore (1976)—are in frequent manufacturing at theatres, opera homes and festivals all over the world. As are his diversifications of classical works by Bertolt Brecht, William Shakespeare, Samuel Beckett, Virginia Woolf and others.
His works for the stage had been identified for a stylised dramaturgy that rejected naturalism. They drew on a variety of musical collaborators from Glass to Tom Waits and Lou Reed, in addition to efficiency modes drawn from silent movie, mime and extra. Their daring visible aesthetic usually concerned smooth, minimalist levels and imaginative makes use of of lighting and projection.
“I fairly often stage a piece—whether or not it’s The Ring of Wagner or Hamlet—visually first, after which later I add textual content,” he instructed The Guardian in 2022. “The visible guide is as necessary because the audio.”
A scene from a 2012 staging of Robert Wilson and Philip Glass’s Einstein on the Seashore (1976) Picture © Lucie Jansch
A few of Wilson’s stage initiatives are additionally identified for his or her extremely lengthy durations; Einstein on the Seashore stretches to almost 5 hours, and attendees are inspired to return and go at their leisure all through the efficiency. Nevertheless, it’s positively concise in comparison with KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE (1972), which was staged on a mountain in Iran over the course of seven days.
Wilson was additionally a prolific visible artist, creating drawings, sculptures and different objects to tell and accompany his stage productions; these had been the topic of an exhibition at SFMoMA in 1991. He has had solo exhibitions or created installations at establishments all over the world together with the Museum of Tremendous Arts, Boston; Centre Pompidou in Paris; the Vitra Design Museum in Weil, Germany; the Minneapolis Institute of Artwork, Mudac Lausanne and lots of extra. He created the exhibition design for the blockbuster Giorgio Armani retrospective that opened on the Solomon R. Guggenheim in New York in 2000 and subsequently travelled for seven years all through Europe and Asia.
Within the 2010s he started creating his Video Portraits sequence, which debuted with an exhibition on the Musée du Louvre in 2013. The work options portraits of Girl Gaga within the model of well-known work, together with Jacques-Louis David’s The Demise of Marat (1793) and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’s Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière (1793-1807). These movies had been proven alongside an set up of round 700 works from Wilson’s private assortment. Subsequent works within the Video Portraits sequence embody portraits of the artists Pope.L and Zhang Huan, in addition to the actors Isabella Rossellini, Brad Pitt and Winona Ryder.
In 2011, Wilson collaborated with the efficiency artist Marina Abramović on the semi-biographical stage manufacturing The Life and Demise of Marina Abramović, which premiered on the Manchester Worldwide Competition and was subsequently produced on the Park Avenue Armory in New York. In 2010, throughout rehearsals for the present, Abramović instructed The Artwork Newspaper: “It’s about childhood and insane tales, virtually like slapstick, which is refreshing. I’m taking part in my mom, which is the worst worry I’ve in my life. I’ve had so many issues with my mom—it’s my pure nightmare come true!”
Robert Wilson with Marina Abramović (left) and Girl Gaga (proper) on the 2013 Watermill Middle Summer time Profit WENN / Alamy
Wilson was born in Waco, Texas, in 1941, and was raised in a really conservative, segregated setting. “I grew up in a group that was extremely conservative, proper wing,” he stated in 2014 interview with The Talks. “Full of non secular fanatics, and Seventh Day Adventists, Southern Baptists, , it was a sin for girls to put on pants, it was a sin to go to the theatre. It was a shame that Abraham Lincoln, the President of the US, was assassinated within the theatre. The theatre was a home of unwell reputation.”
In an effort to remedy him of a stammer, his dad and mom despatched him to check dance as a baby with Byrd Hoffman. After dropping out of his enterprise administration research on the College of Texas in Austin, Wilson moved to Brooklyn and studied inside design and structure at Pratt Institute, graduating with a BFA in 1965. Earlier than the top of the last decade he had assembled a gaggle of performers—the Byrd Hoffman Faculty of Byrds, in homage to his childhood dance teacher—and begun staging performances in New York Metropolis.
In 1992, he based the Watermill Middle, a visible and performing arts middle on the South Fork of Lengthy Island. Its annual profit gala, typically that includes performers in elaborate plein air stagings all through its grounds, has lengthy been a fixture of the Hamptons summer season social calendar. Its most up-to-date version, held simply 5 days earlier than Wilson’s dying, honoured Rossellini and the architect Francis Kéré.
From his research at Pratt, all through his initiatives for the stage and in his visible artwork, structure was a constant affect on Wilson’s work and mind-set.
“I begin with mild. Mild’s what creates the area,” Wilson, describing his course of, instructed Autre Journal earlier this yr. “Fairly often folks working within the theatre, they write a play, they write an opera. They solid it. They rehearse it. And two weeks earlier than they open, they mild it. Louis Kahn spoke after I first went to high school to check structure right here in New York. He stated, ‘College students, begin with mild.’ It had a profound affect on me.”
