Remembering Walter Robinson (1950-2025) | |
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The gallery wishes to join the chorus of joyful remembrances of artist and critic Walter Robinson. Our work with Walter began only a few short years ago, decades after Walter edited ArtRite, cofounded Printed Matter, reported on “Gallery Beat TV”, made important contributions with his paintings to the Pictures Generation movement, became a father, founded Artnet Magazine and years after the traveling retrospective of his paintings curated by Barry Blinderman.
Our first show with Walter was in 2019, after having been introduced for a studio visit by another New York treasure, Guy Richards Smit. We chose to exhibit Walter’s series of Shirt Paintings at the gallery in LA. I think I responded to the sense of order in the shirts, and to their familiarity and wit of course. They also hadn’t been exhibited widely yet. I’m delighted to say that Walter’s Target Men's Red Plaid Long Sleeve Button Down Shirt hangs in my home today.
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Walter Robinson, Target Men's Red Plaid Long Sleeve Button Down Shirt, Acrylic on canvas, 28 x 28 inches, 2016. Photo: Michael Underwood
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Out of acute self-consciousness and just plain good sense we didn’t presume to write expository text about Walter’s work for the exhibition, we instead asked Walter to do that, which he did. Of the Shirt Paintings Walter offered, "It tickles me, the notion of dressing in abstract patterns, which in addition to serving a mundane decorative function also might signal some kind of cosmological order. A plaid may not reach to a heavenly gyre but it certainly can indicate an ancient genealogy. It’s an atavistic anthropology of dress.” I have wonderful memories of walking around downtown LA with Walter; he opined about everything he saw and hilarity of course ensued. Walter drew a fantastic crowd of significant people to his opening and everyone was delighted to see him. Many people that showed up shared that Walter had given them their first break as a writer or had otherwise had some significant positive impact on them at a critical point in their careers.
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Walter Robinson, Shirt Paintings, Installation at CJG, 2019. Photo: Michael Underwood
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This refrain would again be heard loud and clear when we opened our second show with Walter in 2022 titled Escape to Adventure. For this show Walter penned a pulpy adventure story from the perspective of an ill-fated pirate shipwrecked on a lush tropical island filled with Amazons:
"Light gleamed on the spear’s point as she thrust it at me in a lightning move. I threw myself back, but the blade caught my left shoulder. The gash reached down to my elbow, and soon my shirt was sticky with blood. I lunged for the dense undergrowth in a last desperate effort. A colorful tangle of tropical beauty, it was marked by huge tropical trees and a wild profusion of flowers. Raucously hued birds flitted overhead, their strange cries splitting the air. Then the touch of cold metal sent agonizing pain down my spine and across my shoulders. Slowly sinking to my knees, I coughed blood. Before falling into darkness, I heard my pursuers chanting. “Kill! Kill!””
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Walter Robinson, Escape to Adventure, Installation at CJG2, 2022. Photo: Yubo Dong / ofstudio
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When I asked Walter what his work was about, he would always say “Desire”. It seems to me that it's also a roadmap of post-war cultural forms that imprinted on Walter, that stirred him and went into his head and stayed there. I am deeply sympathetic to art made about such things. Walter’s subjects are known to all, but sometimes also reflect the personal. One piece in the Escape to Adventure show that I love and consider a masterpiece is Walter’s Oxy and Tramadol painting (Walter had a bad back). It’s a haunting portrait of a line of pill bottles from his home medicine cabinet. My eyes always find the text “For pain.”
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Walter Robinson, Oxy & Tramadol, Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 60 inches, 2022. Photo: Yubo Dong / ofstudio
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