instead in the conceptual reification of space, which invites the viewer to contemplate the work’s infinite expansion in both space and time. By the 1970s Barry was working almost exclusively with words—his next logical step in the progressive retreat from the art object. In these works, the viewer encounters a series of words, alternately spoken, projected, written, or applied to the gallery walls. Culled from a list that he has honed over the years, the selection is intentionally impersonal, and, removed from syntactic context, the words become objectlike. In the absence of qualifiers or narrative imposition, the audience is left to form their own signification. In a similar gesture of participatory generosity, Barry’s Marcuse Piece (1970, see Fig. 9) functions as an overt invitation to the viewer. In this work, the text on the wall reads: “A place to which we can come and for a while, ‘be free to think about what we are going to do.’” Taken from Essay on Liberation (1969) by German philosopher Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), this work is a utopian provocation, a blank space within which the viewers are confronted with their own agency. As such, this work may be understood as a performance, one that can only be completed through the audience’s collaboration with the artist and their active engagement in the space. In all of Barry’s work, ultimately, the viewer is left to complete the pieces and fill in the gaps that the artist has intentionally left blank. “If I call something ‘art,’” Barry says, “I am using the expression instead of saying: ‘look at this.’”3 The work begins with Barry’s assumption that the viewer is a thinking being, capable of abstract association, contemplation, and close observation—these works are points of departure, spaces to be inhabited. — ANNIE WISCHMEYER
1 “Interview with Robert Barry, October 12, 1969,” in Ursula Meyer, Conceptual Art (New York: Dutton, 1972), p. 39. 2
Meyer, p. 40.
3 Ibid.
ROBERT BARRY ALL THE THINGS I KNOW...
13