Robert Wilson valuation
American theatre and opera director of Einstein on the Beach, whose drawings, chairs and video portraits stand as art of their own.
Robert Wilson (1941–2025) was born in Waco, Texas, studied business administration at the University of Texas and moved to Brooklyn in 1963 to study art and architecture at the Pratt Institute.
What a work by Robert Wilson is worth
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Bio
Robert Wilson (1941–2025) was born in Waco, Texas, studied business administration at the University of Texas and moved to Brooklyn in 1963 to study art and architecture at the Pratt Institute. In the mid-1960s he founded the performance collective the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds in New York, and his first major works, Deafman Glance of 1970 and A Letter for Queen Victoria of 1974 to 1975, set out his manner: slowed-down movement, rigorous geometry and theatre built from light. With Philip Glass he made the opera Einstein on the Beach in 1976, and he went on to stage operas, plays and collaborations around the world, with Tom Waits, Heiner Müller, Susan Sontag, Laurie Anderson, William Burroughs and Lou Reed among many others. He founded the Watermill Center on Long Island as a laboratory for performance in 1991. Alongside the stage he worked as a visual artist throughout his life, and won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale of 1993 for a sculptural installation.
His drawings, in graphite and charcoal on paper, often made in series during rehearsals and suggesting light and space more than scenery, are what most often comes to market. Furniture made for his productions, chairs above all, is shown and sold as sculpture, and his video portraits, slow-moving filmed tableaux of actors, celebrities and animals, exist in editions with their certificates and display equipment. The production a work belongs to, its date and a provenance through Thaddaeus Ropac, which represents his estate, are the main reference points. Charcoal and graphite smudge easily, so drawings should be framed with the glazing clear of the surface.
Waco, the Byrds and Einstein on the Beach
Bluebeard's Castle and Erwartung, with Jessye Norman, opened at the Salzburg Festival in 1998, and his productions also include The Threepenny Opera, Madama Butterfly, Pelléas et Mélisande and Krapp's Last Tape.
His video portraits were shown on more than twenty screens in Times Square in 2012, and he received an Olivier Award in 2013.
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