Western Blot #19 (detail), 1993. Mixed media on wood panels. 60 x 81 in. Courtesy Robert D. Farber Foundation.
New York artist Robert Farber turned to art in his mid-30s and pursued it until his death in 1995 at the age of 47. His work has been shown in such distinguished institutions as the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, the Rose Art Museum of Brandeis University, and the Fisher Gallery at the University of Southern California.
This exhibition includes some of Farber’s early, highly autobiographical works. After learning in 1989 that he was HIV positive, he turned to AIDS as the dominant subject of his art. This approach culminated in his most important work, the Western Blot series (1991–94), large constructions that combine painting, drawing, texts and architectural elements. These works move beyond individual experience and take on a global perspective that links present reality with a Europe ravaged by the bubonic plague centuries ago.
It is a vision by turns painful, moving, compassionate and courageous —and always thoughtful. “Farber’s work has less finality, and more hope in my view, representing not death at all, but the struggle of art to frame life while it can still be lived,” writes Michael Camille. At a time when many Americans seem apathetic and willfully ignorant about AIDS’ impact throughout the world, Farber’s work insists that we take notice, and suggests a life-affirming way of addressing the crisis.
Here is an artist
whose gift and command are profound; and, here is an artist who can move
and shame one simultaneously, so urgent and wrenched is his accomplishment.
—Edward Albee,
playwright
