Pasadena Police Nab Robert Irwin : Art: When the godfather of California Light and Space unveiled his newest work, few cognoscenti thought to look for it at a police station.

By WILLIAM WILSON

July 22, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES ART CRITIC

Robert Irwin is widely regarded as the theoretical godfather of California Light and Space art, arguably Los Angeles’ most original contribution to the lexicon of contemporary styles. No conversation ranking local artists gets very far before Irwin is nominated for the imaginary “most important artist of his generation” award. He’s already received the real and much-coveted MacArthur fellowship, the so-called genius grant.

Yet for all the respect he commands, his informal ranking was once greeted by a disgruntled former gallery mate with the jeer: “That’s pretty good for a guy who never makes any art.” The acid observation carried the sting of its own apparent truth.

The only extant art by Irwin to be found in local museum collections are early paintings and an illuminated disc. These came before the environmental installations and transformations that are regarded as his breakthrough works. A 33-foot-high optical pole of Lucite that was “permanently” installed in a Northridge shopping mall has long since been relegated to storage at Cal State Northridge. A miniature bamboo rain forest he concocted for the Temporary Contemporary went belly-up when it was rammed by a car in a high-speed police chase. The only remaining work is an ancient concrete frame at the entrance to the art department at Cal State Long Beach.

The 62-year-old Irwin moved to San Diego about eight years ago after an exhausting and somewhat dispiriting stint as an adviser to the then-unbuilt Museum of Contemporary Art. Nothing has been seen of him hereabouts since.

Considering all that, you’d think that the completion of a major and permanent project in the Los Angeles area would be an occasion for interest if not flat-out celebration. Yet when Irwin unveiled such a venture here recently it was greeted by the local art community with thunderous silence.

The chances are art-world folks just didn’t know it was there. Even though it is in a conspicuous public place, you could look right at it and never recognize it as Irwin’s. Besides, who would ever suspect radical Robert of collaborating with the cops after what happened to his bamboo?

But he did. He designed the plaza for the new police headquarters at 207 N. Garfield Ave. in Pasadena’s civic center. The building’s architect was Robert Stern. Working with landscape architects Douglas and Regula Campbell, Irwin concocted a handsome, understated ceremonial space that joins the new building and a dilapidated older structure scheduled for eventual renovation.

In Irwin’s central space, two levels of concrete steps descend gently to a square filled with multicolored pebbles. A low rusticated brown stone fountain shaped roughly like a Roman numeral I bisects the square. A basin at the far end sends water down a narrow defile where it dribbles over a base at the other end, irrigating a pattern of subtly colored succulents Irwin planted with his own hands.

The dribble rock acts as a base for a ceremonial column. It is topped by a cobalt blue glass lantern and surrounded by a capital of four eagles’ heads whose wings fuse in Art Deco style. If Irwin were given to private jokes one might suspect him of having a little quiet fun with the sometimes authoritarian image of the police. But there is no time to think about that when one’s mind is swamped with wonder at the idea of Irwin, the master of dematerialization, even doing such a thing as an Art Deco-style ornamental object.

As in many a new garden, this one seems a trifle sun-baked and bare for the comfort of the loungers it is supposed to welcome. Time will take care of that when two sycamore trees Irwin placed at the back of the plaza come to full maturity. The artist picked them for their historic and symbolic importance to Pasadena. Among the most handsome, rugged and reassuring of trees, they grow large and embowering over time.

There is one feature that might clue the sharp passer-by that this is no ordinary plaza. A screen wall running along the back length is painted a startling bright fuchsia lavender. Initially, it caused some consternation among staid Pasadenans and police who thought having their building marked by an ice cream-colored wall was sort of, well, sissy.

They are growing to like it. Besides, Irwin purposely underpainted the wall to cause it to blister and patinate. He sits contemplating his mellowing work. He wears shorts, jogging shoes and a baseball cap all in white and blues.

“I purposely planned (the wall) to season over time. One of the things I’m most pleased about is that nobody has tried to graffiti it. I take that as a sign that the work fits in the way I wanted it to. Richard Serra’s public works get vandalized. I told him that’s because his work is confrontational by nature. It invites that kind of response. I take the lack of damage to this work to mean people accept it as a natural part of the environment.

“I make a distinction between ‘public art’ and ‘art in public places.’ Public art implies the public has a voice in it. That’s fine and there is a place for it. Art in public places means that art history itself is being acted out in the public arena. People use terms as if they are interchangeable. The patrons are naive and nice but when it comes down to it what they often want is a Henry Moore.

“I believe in what I call ‘conditional’ or ‘site-determined’ art. You have to study the site and the surroundings carefully, soaking it up block by block. I do this all myself. I’m not affiliated with any institution and don’t have any assistants. I think that lends to the intimacy of the response.”

This is a far cry from the Robert Irwin who in 1977 removed the facade of a building on Venice’s Market Street and covered the space with a light-softening scrim. It was pure art-for-its-own-phenomenal-sake. Come to think of it, that vulnerable work wasn’t vandalized either. But the plaza looks like Irwin is channeling famous landscape architects like Capability Brown or Frederick Law Olmsted gone Post-Modern.

“This site is about geometry and architecture so I responded to that. The next project might be about forests and I’ll try to respond to that. You can’t completely re-invent yourself for every project but I think the special thing artists bring to them is a willingness to involve themselves on an intimate qualitative level.”

Irwin confesses that working in the public arena is a hassle. “The minute you go public you’re in a place where what you do can determine whether or not the mayor gets re-elected. I don’t look for work. I wait to be invited. I’ve entered 25 competitions for art in public places and won 24 of them hands down. This is the first one that’s ever been completed.”

He’s learned many a lesson in projects collapsing from politics, under-financing, bureaucratic bungling and official attacks of cold feet. The projects are financially risky and he not uncommonly loses money on them.

For all that, he has gotten a fair number completed outside the competition process--a lyric stainless steel wall at Wellesley College, ceremonial gates at the San Francisco airport, some fence-boxed trees in Seattle and the renovated old post office building in Washington, among others.

He confesses that there are times when he’d like to give up the nomadic life and go back to the studio and paint. In the end, however, he feels that would “beg the question.” Like a growing number of thoughtful artists, he feels that art has to find its way outside an art scene often tainted by greed and careerism. He is, however, looking forward to a retrospective being organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art for 1993.

For the rest, he believes artists operate under a historical imperative to make art for the public. “Modernism was a serious history. It was about a new set of perceptions and values with broad social implication. This issue now is how to carry those values into our everyday lives.”