Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees

"Irwin worked through a series of styles which recapitulate a complete strand in American painting. Figuration was replaced by semi-abstraction. This was followed by Abstract Expressionism, then by color-field painting, conceptual art and land art. As each step can seem a willful rejection of complexity and richness, the reasons for the moves Irwin made must justify as well as explain. Set out in Weschler’s book (much of it is direct quotation from interviews with Irwin), they are convincing. Irwin’s story is one of aesthetic claustrophobia, of attempts to break out of the limits set by his own work."

— London Review of Books

“Weschler’s ability to concede the book to Irwin does not just attest to his ear for the artist’s fluid, if sometimes off-key, dialogue but also confirms that retaining such oddities is often finer than anything a biographer could conjure (it is worth noting that this remarkable book was also Weschler’s first). . . . Seeing is Forgetting may not be just the best biography of an artist out there but also one of the best books on contemporary art-making.”

— Frieze

“Seeing Is Forgetting and True to Life [on David Hockney, UC Press] are not only about the artists talking to Weschler or, through him, to each other; they're about the artists talking to themselves.”

— Los Angeles Times Book Review

“Irwin is one of the great artists and artistic innovators of our day. He is also one of the most eloquent. And he was fortunate enough to find his Boswell. Back in the 18th century, pioneering biographer James Boswell preserved writer Samuel Johnson’s marvelous style of conversation. And while we have many other means now of preserving someone’s words, Irwin’s acquire a special life in Lawrence Weschler’s magnetic (now expanded) biography.”

— San Diego Union-Tribune