robert wilson

“In the frame of a PhD dissertation on Robert Wilson’s creative process that turned into a book series, I collaborated for three years on video design for The Days Before DDDIII with text by Umberto Eco, music by Ryuichi Sakamoto, ft. Isabella Rossellini, at the Lincoln Center in New York.” — PV

ROBERT WILSON

"[America's] or even the world's foremost vanguard theater artist." — The New York Times

“Since the late 1960s, Robert Wilson's productions have decisively shaped the look of theater and opera. Through his signature use of light, his investigations into the structure of a simple movement, and the classical rigor of his scenic and furniture design, Wilson has continuously articulated the force and originality of his vision. Wilson's close ties and collaborations with leading artists, writers, and musicians continue to fascinate audiences worldwide.“ — The Watermill Center

THEATER

"The third work of a trilogy begun in 1979 in Berlin, with the second part created in 1987, this piece premiered in 1999 in New York City with a cast of almost forty actors, dancers and singers from all over the world. Robert Wilson has described the piece as being for him a sort of dreamscape that has as its themes apocalypse and redemption. Each of its twelve scenes tells its own story with no overt reference to the other scenes –the themes for the scenes came from sources as diverse as the Bible, the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, a newspaper article about an old woman’s suicide, historical incidents. They are unified by Mr. Wilson’s staging and use of visual elements, by the text taken from Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before, and by the music of Ryuichi Sakamoto. Additional text comes from a series of Tone Poems written and performed by Christopher Knowles. A simple, blond-wood stage reminiscent of the Noh theatre of Japan is transformed by the use of lights, video, painted drops and a host of objects flying in from above – an angel with the head of a deer, a little girl who wears the mask of a huge baby and rides on a comet, to name just a few." — Change Performing Arts

“I had the privilege of working for three years as a video design collaborator of The Days Before DDDIII by Robert Wilson. Each summer, we developed the project at The Watermill Center in The Hamptons, New York, and spent a week at Piccolo Teatro di Milano, and a month at Teatro Comunale di Modena in Italy. Along with Christopher Kondek, video designer, I decided to search, at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., early cinema footage from 1895 to 1907, which contributed to create an audiovisual narrative.” — Pedro Valiente

BOOKS

“The book series Robert Wilson. Planetary Performing Arts (Ñaque Ed.), and Suspended Time Space. Robert Wilson’s Creative Process (upcoming), follow Study of Robert Wilson’s Creative Process, a PhD dissertation that served as a way of immersing myself in contemporary art in the frame of the avant-garde.

Over the past several decades, Robert Wilson is well known as a master of opera staging, with successful productions commissioned by major opera houses, especially in Paris and Berlin. Although Wilson is essentially a theater author/director and visual artist immersed in movement, as he has created an extensive visual work including drawings, paintings, furniture design, video art, and installations.

Wilson is the master of light in the performing arts of the 20th century and beyond. He is a great admirer of dancer Martha Graham, and a follower of the Black Mountain College experimental tradition with figures like painter Robert Rauschenberg and musician John Cage. Wilson appears in the emblematic book The Theater of Images together with Richard Foreman and Mabou Mines.

Robert Wilson belongs to the unique generation that took New York by storm in the second half of the 60s to establish groundbreaking languages for contemporary art to this day. Writers Heiner Müller, and William S. Burroughs; musicians Philip Glass, Lou Reed, and Tom Waits are among his numerous extraordinary collaborators. I could not lock myself in for years into any other world.” — PV

PHD

ABSTRACT I “Study of Robert Wilson’s Creative Process presents research on one of the most influential multidisciplinary creators in the performing arts at the end of the twentieth century. The first part, 'Robert Wilson and the Scenic Avant-Garde in the Context of Contemporary Art', is a comparative study between Wilson and other creators and artistic movements. It also includes a breakdown of the fundamental traits of his theatrical, audiovisual, and visual work, along with a final essay framing his work within certain forms of ritual art.

In the second part, 'Aesthetic Evolution of Robert Wilson through Death Destruction & Detroit: 1979, 1987, 1999', the focus is on the core of Wilson's style: the creative process, using different versions of a production as a reference, spanning the three decades in which Wilson has developed his work. The text includes writings about Wilson and his main collaborators, a reference to the Spanish scenic avant-garde, and the catalog of his work.” I Universidad Complutense de Madrid

RW Theater I Books I PhD