In an era of striving for ultimate solutions, painters are continually testing the outermost bounds of perception. Artists from Russian Suprematist Kasimir Malevitch to Jasper Johns have turned out white-on-white paintings; Ad Reinhardt experimented with black on black. Latest and farthest-out researcher is Cali fornia's Robert Irwin, 39, who has developed pictures composed of light on light. Each painting consists of a white aluminum disk, sprayed at the edges with a subtle blush of blue, pink or grey. Mounted 15 or 20 inches from the wall, the disks are lit by four small spotlights, which cast phantasmal shadows on the wall behind.
As far as Irwin is concerned, this adds up to a transcendental experience. "What you finally have," says he, "is no beginning and no end, but a series of physical experiences moving on to infinity." To experience infinity, New Yorkers should first call at Manhattan's Jewish Museum, where five Irwins are on view. Once there, the viewers are expected to contemplate each work for at least 30 minutes—which is what Irwin does. As time passes, lights and blushes interweave; the shadows on the wall seem to march up and join the painting, until the spectator may well feel as though he were gazing into a galactic nebula or a darkened sun.
The effect, incompletely conveyed by photographs, should surprise no ophthalmologist. It is caused by what is known as "retinal bleaching." When the eye gazes fixedly at the disk, the strong white light reflected from its center falls on the retina, causing a chemical substance in the center to temporarily bleach away. This causes local fatigue, and makes the center of the image appear less intense—a kind of blinding. Thus the weaker light from the disk's edge and the shadows beyond are perceived more intensely than the center and appear more vivid.
Irwin's technique, therefore, is to turn off the spectator in the very act of turning him on. Not all enjoy the treatment. When Irwin's early canvases were shown at the 1965 Sao Paulo Bienal, Brazilians were so incensed that they slashed, kicked and spat at them, presumably while the guards were not looking. Manhattan Collectors Burton and Emily Tremaine hung an Irwin in their art-filled living room, found that it haughtily negated everything else there "like a nun at a cocktail party." Reluctantly, they took it down.
Irwinophiles who survive the initial discomfort say that they eventually discover an ineluctable serenity in the artist's work. The National Gallery's assistant director, J. Carter Brown, considers Irwin one of the most talented artists to come along since Mark Rothko. The Metropolitan Museum's contemporary-art curator, Henry Geldzahler, bought an Irwin in 1962, despite the fact that looking at it made him "feel ill and weak all over." It now hangs in his bedroom, where he maintains that it exerts "a calming effect."