Since the 1960s, Robert Irwin has been an influential American artist. Beginning as an abstract expressionist, he progressively honed his vocation, first toward ever-more-minimal painterly gestures, then as one of the founders of the so-called Light and Space movement, and subsequently a long period when his work, often maddeningly temporary, became entirely site-conditioned.

Emerging at the far end, he has been responsible for such epoch-shaping masterpieces as the Central Garden at The Getty Center in Los Angeles and the overall design for Dia Art Foundation’s new Beacon, New York museum. Throughout his career he has attempted to get people to perceive themselves perceiving—arguably, the greatest marvel of all.