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Watts (Robert) papers
2006.M.27
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Title: Robert Watts papers
Date (inclusive): 1883-1989 (bulk 1940-1988)
Number: 2006.M.27
Creator/Collector:
Watts, Robert
Physical Description:
36.5 Linear Feet
(76 boxes, 9 flat file folders)
Repository:
The Getty Research Institute
Special Collections
1200 Getty Center Drive, Suite 1100
Los Angeles 90049-1688
reference@getty.edu
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10020/askref
(310) 440-7390
Abstract: American artist of mixed media,
sculpture, and assemblage, best known as a founding member of Fluxus. The archive consists
of correspondence, manuscripts, personal documents, and many photographs and slides
documenting Watts' work and affiliations with artists. Also included are three works of
art.
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Language: Collection material is in
English
Biographical / Historical Note
Robert Watts, born in 1923, spent his childhood and adolescence in Iowa and Louisville,
Kentucky. The son of a mechanical engineer, Watts also earned an engineering degree, but
after serving in World War II, went on to study art history at Columbia University. His
emphasis was the study of ancient art and architecture in the Americas and Australia; his
Master's thesis was on the masks of the Alaskan Eskimo (M.A. 1951).
For several years Watts worked as an abstract expressionist painter while teaching in the
engineering department at Rutgers University. By the late 1950s he had moved to the art
department and had also begun to employ his engineering training in his art, initially
making boxes with electro-mechanical circuitry. Rutgers colleague Allan Kaprow,
sculptor-chemist George Brecht, and Watts together wrote a proposal for an experimental
laboratory for multi-media art entitled "Project in Multiple Dimensions" (1957-1958). Though
never funded, this proposal articulated new assumptions about art in its relation to the
everyday and to increasingly accessible media technologies, soon to find expression in the
happenings, events, and installations of the 1960s, and eventually in the formation of
Fluxus and Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.).
The everyday objects Watts reinvented as artifacts (cartons of eggs, stamps, floor mops)
associated him with Pop Art, and his pieces appeared in the landmark 1963 Bianchini
Supermarket Show. Philosophically, however, he was most allied with Fluxus, of which he was
a founding and lifelong member. Persistently seeking ways to infiltrate commodity culture
with art, Watts de-emphasized himself as creator while brilliantly illuminating
infrastructural systems such as the U.S. postal service, mint, patent office or F.B.I. He
worked in a wide range of novel media, including neon, laminates, Polaroid photography,
video, film, sound, and light. While his studies in ancient art inform much of his work
indirectly, they most distinctly appear in the African statues made of chrome. He
collaborated with Fluxus associates on many events, workshops and festivals, including Yam
Festival (1963) and FluxYear/Gemini (1974; 1978). In 1967, Watts and George Maciunas worked
with Herman Fine to create a company called Implosions for producing and distributing ironic
anti-commodities, such as disfiguring masks or transparent plastic dresses.
As an art professor, Watts was equally ingenious, establishing an Experimental Workshop at
Rutgers that he took to the University of California at Santa Cruz in 1968. Believing that
approaches to teaching art had to be radically changed, Watts encouraged a collaborative and
spontaneous approach to creating multi-media events, some featuring recurring characters in
Watts' work, like the Fur Family. In 1970 he co-edited an anthology,
Proposals for Art Education.
Though most often exhibited in group shows, Watts had significant solo shows at the Museum
of Modern Art and Rene Block Gallery in New York, the Ricke Gallery in Kassel, and at
Multhipla and Francesco Conz Gallery in Milan. Since his death in 1988, Watts' prescience as
an artist has been increasingly recognized, most influentially in a 1990 show at Leo
Castelli Gallery, in
Experiments in the Everyday: Allan Kaprow and
Robert Watts
(1999) and in
Off-Limits: Rutgers University and
the Avant-garde
(1999).
Open for use by qualified researchers, with the exception of unreformatted audiovisual
material. Access restricted for Boxes 2, 3, 4, and 7 pending the estate's further
consideration.
Contact
Library Reproductions and Permissions .
Robert Watts papers, 1883-1989, bulk 1940-1988, Research Library, The Getty Research
Institute, Accession no. 2006.M.27
http://hdl.handle.net/10020/cifa2006m27
Acquired in 2006 from the Robert Watts Estate.
Lora Chin did the preliminary processing of the collection, and Annette Leddy further
processed and arranged it.
Processed by Lora Chin and Annette Leddy. Original inventory numbers assigned by the Estate
have been retained.
Digitized Audiovisual Material
Online access to
selected digitized audio and video recordings is available to on-site
readers and Getty staff.
Scope and Content of Collection
The collection documents Robert Watts' development as an artist and art professor, with
ample evidence of his relationship with Fluxus colleagues, dealers and friends. Watts' Iowa
family background is presented in photographs, correspondence, family genealogies, health
histories, legal and financial papers, and clippings dating back to the 1880s; together with
report cards and yearbooks, these offer a relatively clear picture of the artist's
midwestern roots. Photographs portray his subsequent years in the service and in New York
while a student at Columbia, with summers on Monhegan Island, while graduate school term
papers and his Master's thesis on Alaskan masks reveal his early interest in artifacts.
Academic files convey Watts' career with nearly annual grant applications and project
proposals. Professional correspondence is mainly between Watts and his dealers, including
Francesco Conz and Rolfe Ricke, along with certain curators and collectors, such as Gilbert
Silverman and Jean Brown. Personal correspondence, though containing photocopies of cards
and letters from George Brecht and George Maciunas and originals from Dick Higgins, is
relatively scant.
Series IV, Work files is the core of the archive, containing hundreds of drawings for
completed and unrealized projects, scripts or scores, and certain completed objects such as
the stamps, letterheads, and laminations.
FluxMed (1987),
Watts' medical graphics based on 19th century French engravings, is present in various
stages of its creation. The greater portion of this series consists of source material,
including postcards, clippings, and brochures for various electronic or mechanical devices
that inspired Watts and that are accompanied in some cases by drawings or calculations
regarding their adaptation to Watts' projects.
Series V, Photographs and slides contains fourteen photograph albums that Watts assembled.
A unique record of the artist's intermingled life and art, they are arranged more
thematically than chronologically. Some of these images also appear in the photograph files,
including numerous images of Pamela Kraft, Watts' longtime partner and model.
Series VII, Printed matter contains nine flat files, mostly of Fluxus posters with striking
graphics and abundant information on events, artists, and ideas. Also included is a
comprehensive collection of clippings containing reviews or articles about Watts or his
associates.
Series X, Audio visual contains all the films Watts made along with the sound tracks or
music that accompanied them.
Three art objects are included in the collection.
Boxes 2, 3, 4, and 7 are sealed, pending the Estate's further consideration.
Numbers in brackets within folder entries were assigned by the Estate.
Arranged in eleven series:
Series I. Personal,
1889-1989
Series II. Academic files,
1949-1988
Series III. Correspondence,
1960-1988
Series IV. Work files, 1939-1988
Series V. Photographs and slides, 1937-1988
Series VI. Other artists' files, 1957-1989
Series VII. Printed matter, 1883-1988
Series VIII. Books, 1940-1975
Series IX. Serials, 1961-1979
Series X. Audiovisual, 1957-1987
Series XI. Additions, 1962-1987
Kraft, Pamela
Maciunas, George
Watts, Robert
Fluxus (Group of Artists)
Implosions (Firm)
Conceptual Art
Happening (Art)
Performance art
Art and technology
Art, American -- 20th century
Art -- Study and teaching
FluxMed
Drawings (visual works) -- 20th century
Mail art
Photographic prints -- 20th century
Mechanical drawings -- 20th century
Motion pictures (visual works) -- 20th century
DVDs -- 20th century
Phonograph records -- 20th century
Compact discs -- 20th century
Photographs, Original
Audiotapes -- 20th century
Videocassettes -- 20th century
Maciunas, George
Ricke, Rolfe
Silverman, Gilbert
Watts, Robert
Conz, Francesco
Brown, Jean
Brecht, George
Kaprow, Allan