Disc Installation

Robert Irwin is associated with the Modern Art movement and is best known for his Installation art. Philosophers influence Irwin’s work, such as Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s ideas of engagement and interaction between the physical world and people. Irwin reflects these ideas through his disc installations. From 1967-1969 he worked on this installation, which consists of convex discs made of metal and plastic. The discs hang on a wall and are illuminated by floodlights to create the illusion of no edges. It is a play on light, dark, shadows, and the space in which the discs lie in. Inspiration The disc installation was born from Robert Irwin’s previous works with lines and dots. He worked with lines (on canvas) from 1957 to 1964, but the “prepositional tendency had the effect of dribbling away the viewer’s presence before the canvas" (Robert Irwin). The lines led to the dots (many dots on a canvas ranging in colors which all met in the center creating the focal point), which he worked with from 1964 to 1967. But something about the dots didn’t sit right with Irwin. He began to question the use of the frame and edges. This led to his manipulation of light, dark, shadow, and the exhibition space, which gave the artwork the ability to “dissolve into its environment.” Composition Irwin’s intention with the discs was to create a blending between light and dark resulting in an “evenness” while escaping the traditional confinements of a frame. The first experimental discs were made out of a translucent plastic to produce the least amount of contrast between the edges of the disc and the shadow the lights gave off. But it was a trial and error because the discs were too floppy to be used. It took a while searching in California for Irwin to find the right metal shop in downtown Los Angeles that was right for the job. The discs produced by this shop were made of a lightweight aluminum that were shaped by hand with the help of a machine “that consisted of just a soft-shaped steel plate and a drop hammer.” In the later years of Irwin’s work with the discs, he was able to create a plastic disc that wasn’t too floppy. To avoid the floppy problem, he used a double crowning technique which is essentially a bulge within a bulge. The shape, three-dimensional convex circles, derived from the dot pieces. Irwin wanted them to be circular in order to avoid the corners a square or rectangle would produce. But instead of being flat it needed to be convex to deemphasize the edge.