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Walter Robinson

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DEATH TURNS THE TABLE, 2021

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About The Work

“Death Turns the Tables” is the title of a 1941 detective story by John Dickson Carr, a classic – read old fashioned, even hackneyed – whodunnit where an imperious vigilante of a judge becomes the murder suspect. This about-face, this reversal of fortune, this return of the repressed is broadly speaking an elemental mechanism of intellectual discovery, in which the fresh and new dispenses with the old and tired.

For the avant-garde, upsetting conventions is the first step on a path towards freedom – figuratively speaking, that is, for it can only hope to strike terror in the hearts of unbelievers, as is suggested by this picture. A sinister Abstract Expressionist painting – a primitive design of ragged stripes of red and black, presumably inspired by Clyfford Still – serves as backdrop for a melodramatic scene, which presents a woman in a lacy white nightgown – must she be innocent? – standing shocked, panicked by whatever looms in front of her. No doubt the killer or a scene of his crime, this horrifying vision curiously occupies the same position as the viewer. We are the witness, we are the perpetrator. As we look at the picture, it turns the table and looks right back at us – and screams.

— Walter Robinson, NYC, 2022

Courtesy of JRP | Editions

About Walter Robinson

Based in New York City since the late 1960s, Walter Robinson has enjoyed a dynamic career as a painter, critic, writer, and editor, the last of which capacities he pursued as the founding editor of Artnet Magazine. Robinson is recognized for his deftly executed, colorful paintings. Early colleagues include Pictures Generation artists Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince. His work has been included in landmark New York exhibitions ranging from the downtown guerrilla "Real Estate Show" of 1980 to the recent "Bad Conscience" exhibit, which was held at Metro Pictures and curated by the artist John Miller. Robinson's style has been linked to Postmodernism and Neo-Expressionism, but perhaps most importantly, his painting project is concerned with the aesthetics of commodity culture. So being, the artist engages low consumer-oriented subjects along the lines of hamburgers, liquor bottles, Chase Bank, fashion models, cliché romantic scenarios, pornography, and the like.

“I want my paintings to insinuate the viewer into an economy of desire,” explains Robinson. “The dynamic is like a feedback loop, with biological and social dimensions. You have imagery that is designed to sell, both by nature and culture, and you have objects—paintings—that are about the hungers they represent.”

Robinson was born in Wilmington, Delaware in 1950 and grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He moved to New York in 1968 to attend Columbia University, where he studied art history and psychology. After he graduated, in 1972, Robinson enrolled in the Whitney Independent Study Program, and during the 1980s, he was a member of CoLab. Robinson was a contributing editor at Art in America from 1978 to 1997, a cofounder (with Edit DeAk) of Art-Rite magazine in the 1970s, and the art editor of The East Village Eye through the 1980s. Later, he was the correspondent for “Art Gallery Beat” in the late 1990s and is the author of Instant Art History (Ballantine, 1994). He has exhibited his art at the New Museum and the Drawing Center in New York, among numerous other galleries, art fairs, and institutions. Robinson writes a regular column for the Artspace Magazine.