Robert Barry (born March 9, 1936) is an American artist. Since 1967, Barry has produced non-material works of art, installations, and

performance art Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

using a variety of otherwise invisible media. In 1968, Robert Barry is quoted as saying "Nothing seems to me the most potent thing in the world."

Life and career

Barry was born and grew up in

The Bronx The Bronx ( ) is the northernmost of the five Boroughs of New York City, boroughs of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the U.S. state of New York (state), New York. It shares a land border with Westchester County, New York, West ...

, New York City. A graduate of

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

, he studied there under artists William Baziotes and

Robert Motherwell Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American Abstract Expressionism, abstract expressionist Painting, painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of th ...

, later joining the college's faculty. Since 1967, Barry has produced non-material works of art, installations, and performance art. Barry moved to

Teaneck, New Jersey Teaneck () is a Township (New Jersey), township in Bergen County, New Jersey, Bergen County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is a bedroom community in the New York metropolitan area. The town is know for their pancake throwing contest held ...

in 1974, with his wife and two sons.

Work

Barry's work focuses on escaping the previously known physical limits of the art object in order to express the unknown or unperceived. Consequently, Barry has explored a number of different avenues toward defining the usually unseen space around objects, rather than producing the objects themselves. "On Golden Square" has two different levels of perception: the light area, visible from distance, and the golden square in the center visible only from close. Major nonvisible works from his early period include "Carrier Wave", in which Barry used the carrier waves of a radio station for a prescribed length of time "not as a means of transmitting information, but rather as an object.", Radiation Piece, and Inert Gas Piece, in which Barry opened various containers of inert gases in different settings before groups of spectators, such as a canister of helium released in a desert. In the late 1960s Barry's work was published in

0 to 9 magazine ''0 to 9'' was a literary magazine that was published between 1967 and 1969 edited by Vito Acconci and Bernadette Mayer in New York City. Produced cheaply with a small print run, ''0 to 9s content explored issues around language, performance ...

, an avant-garde journal which experimented with language and meaning-making. These pieces were blank, only appearing in the table of contents. When asked about his piece for exhibition "Prospect '69," his response was "The piece consists of the ideas that people will have from reading this interview... The piece in its entirety is unknowable because it exists in the mind of so many people. Each person can really know that part which is in his own mind."

Exhibitions

Barry's work has been shown in international events such as the

Paris Biennale The ''Biennale de Paris'' (English: Paris Biennale) is a noted French art festival, established in 1959. In 1983, the organization ceased functions, until its reestablishment in 2000 with the first exhibition of the new era occurring in 2004. T ...

(1971),

Documenta Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...

, Kassel (1972), and the

Venice Biennale The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...

(1972).Light and Dark - The Projections of Robert Barry 1967 - 2012, December 14, 2012 - January 26, 2013

Yvon Lambert Gallery Yvon Lambert Gallery is a contemporary art gallery in Paris founded by Yvon Lambert in 1966. History In 1966, Yvon Lambert opened his first gallery on the rue de L'Échaudé in Paris, France where he began to exhibit American artists. He showed f ...

. He is represented in Paris and New York by

. * "SOMETHING IN A BOX by Robert Barry and other things in boxes by Philippe Cazal, Braco Dimitrijevic, Paul-Armand Gette and UNTEL", 2014, galerie mfc-michèle didier, Paris. * "Taking your time - Robert Barry", 2012, gallery mfc-michèle didier, Paris.

Collections

Barry is included in the permanent collections of renowned museums including the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

, New York; the

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden is an art museum beside the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. The museum was initially endowed during the 1960s with the permanent art collection of Joseph H. Hirshhorn. It was designed ...

, Washington, DC; the

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...

, New York; the Musée d’Orsay, Paris; the

Whitney Museum of American Art The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...

, New York; the

Musée National d'Art Moderne The Musée National d'Art Moderne (; "National Museum of Modern Art") is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in the 4th arrondissement of Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou. In 2021 it ranked 10th in the list of ...

Centre Georges Pompidou The Centre Pompidou (), more fully the (), also known as the Pompidou Centre in English and colloquially as Beaubourg, is a building complex in Paris, France. It was designed in the style of high-tech architecture by the architectural team of ...

, Paris; the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles and the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

, Washington, DC.

References

Books

* *

External links

Oral history interview with Robert Barry, 2010 May 14-15
from the Smithsonian

Archives of American Art The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washing ...

Galeria Jaqueline Martins
{{DEFAULTSORT:Barry, Robert 1936 births Living people Hunter College alumni Hunter College faculty American modern artists Artists from Teaneck, New Jersey Artists from the Bronx American conceptual artists American installation artists American performance artists