Regarded as one of the most innovative theater artists of our time, Robert Wilson (b. 1941) has built a reputation for his groundbreaking spirit. Over the course of his career, he has reinvented himself – from a counterculture icon thanks to his collaborations with figures such as Tom Waits for the music and William S. Burroughs for the lyrics of the 1990 production The Black Rider, to working alongside Lou Reed for POEtry inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, and later engaging with pop stars such as Marina Abramović, with whom he created The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, featuring music by Antony Hegarty, and Lady Gaga, for a series of video portraits exhibited at the Louvre in 2013.
I never thought of theatre design as decoration, but as something architectural.
Robert Wilson, Domus 1048, July-August 2020
Trained as an architect and deeply influenced by his time with Paolo Soleri in Arizona, while taking classes with Sibyl Moholy-Nagy (the widow of László Moholy-Nagy), Wilson also studied painting with George McNeil. It was during his years at Pratt Institute that he discovered his passion for theater, by immersing himself in the world of dance and inspired by legends like George Balanchine, Merce Cunningham, and Martha Graham. A pivotal moment came when he began working with disabled boys – a key activity that would shape his theatrical vision. In 1968, he founded the “Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds,” an experimental company named in honor of Miss Hoffman, the dance teacher who helped him overcome his stutter.
From this company emerged Deafman’s Glance (1970), the work that established Wilson as the most original director of his generation.
“At center stage was Raymond, a deaf-mute orphan I had adopted to spare him a fate in a reformatory. To communicate with him, I had to reinvent my expressive language, turning this challenge into a stage triumph,” Wilson explained in an interview with GBOPERA.
The seven-hour “silent opera,” built entirely on Raymond’s observations, premiered at the Center for New Performing Arts in Iowa City, featuring a cast that included performance artist Ana Mendieta, among others. It soon made its way to Paris, backed by fashion designer Pierre Cardin and praised by surrealist poet Louis Aragon.
Wilson’s work with the “Byrds” ended in 1975 when he began collaborating with professional actors. This transition led to the creation of Einstein on the Beach (1976), a production resulting from collaborations with Christopher Knowles – a young man with an early diagnosis of brain damage – composer Philip Glass, and choreographer Lucinda Childs. Wilson’s success was such that his works became celebrated, with their austere style, deliberately slow movements, and ability to span both space and time earning international acclaim. This innovative approach was exemplified in The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin (1973), a seven-act, twelve-hour epic that, in many ways, encapsulated the experimental work he had begun with the “Byrds” and KA MOUNTain and GUARDenia Terrace (1972), a continuous performance that lasted seven full days and involved hundreds of performers.
In 1998, Wilson was chosen to celebrate the 70th anniversary of Domus with a project inspired by Gio Ponti's original idea of placing angel figures on the facade of the Taranto Cathedral. The result was "70 Angels on the Facade," a performance staged in February of that same year at the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, which summarized the long history of the magazine.
I had the idea of staging a play continuously for seven days, a kind of frame or window into the world where the ordinary and extraordinary could be seen together. Whether you came at 8 a.m., 3 p.m., or midnight, the play was always there, a 24-hour clock merging natural time with supernatural time.
Robert Wilson, in the catalog text for the “Iran Modern” exhibition at the Asia Society Museum, New York City, 2013
But Wilson’s creativity has never been confined to the stage. In 1976, his storyboards were showcased at the Paula Cooper Gallery. Drawings, sculptures, environmental installations, and furniture design. His foray into the visual arts reached a high point in 1993 when he won the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for Memory/Loss, an environmental installation described by Wilson as “very serious and severe,” featuring a floor of clay accompanied by music from Hans Peter Kuhn and inspired by T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land.
During the 1980s and 1990s, Wilson re-engaged with institutional theater, staging classics like King Lear (1990) and Hamlet (1993), contemporary operas such as Heiner Müller’s Hamletmachine (1986), and literary adaptations like Virginia Woolf’s Orlando (produced in 1989 and 1993). His Opera directions, including Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (1993), are celebrated for their innovative reduction of superfluous stage elements and a focus on a refined, essential color palette, transforming Opera into a profoundly visual experience.
Gertrude Stein said, when asked what she thought of modern art: ‘I like to look at it.’
Robert Wilson, Domus 1048, July-August 2020
In 1991, Wilson founded The Watermill Center, a ten-acre campus on Long Island’s East End featuring meticulously designed gardens and landscapes that serve as both a “performance laboratory” and a repository for his extensive art collection.
Wilson’s journey into television and video began in 2004, thanks to another visionary figure, Ali Hossaini – described by The New York Times as “a biochemist turned philosopher, television producer, and visual poet” – who offered him a residency at the LAB HD television channel. Collaborating first with producer Esther Gordon and later with Matthew Shattuck, Wilson developed Voom Portraits, a series of high-definition videos capturing famous figures, royalty, Nobel Prize winners, as well as animals and homeless individuals.
At the time of Wilson’s exhibition at the Louvre, the series notably included a portrait of pop icon Lady Gaga, following their collaboration on her ARTPOP album and the award-winning set that garnered MTV Video Music Awards. The videos were in a London studio over three days, with Gaga enduring intense 14- to 15-hour sessions. The exhibition, titled Living Rooms (2013), featured two video pieces: one inspired by Jacques-Louis David’s The Death of Marat, displayed in the museum’s painting galleries, and another paying homage to Ingres.
Wilson’s innovative spirit continues to flourish in both visual and performing arts. His recent projects include Panther Owls Elk – Animal Stories, an installation at LAC Lugano Arte e Cultura in 2023 that transforms the space into a virtual forest through video portraits of animals, and a reimagined production of Relative Calm. Collaborating once again with choreographer Lucinda Childs (more than four decades after Einstein on the Beach), this performance melds dance, visual design, and the music of Igor Stravinsky’s Pulcinella.
The chairs in my productions are not thought of as stage props but can be seen on their own as sculpture.
Robert Wilson, Domus 1048, July-August 2020
Among his projects is an art park inaugurated in 2011 in Helsinki’s Arabianranta district, dedicated to Finnish designer Tapio Wirkkala (1915–1985). This rectangular park, illuminated by large, lightbox-style lamps embedded in the ground, features a plaza divided into nine equal fields separated by bushes, each field celebrating a different domestic object. In design, his “Signature Chairs,” a series of chairs designed as everyday objects capable of telling stories and frequently featured in his theatrical productions, have become iconic.
In 2023, Robert Wilson was awarded the Praemium Imperiale for Theater/Film category by the Japan Art Association.
At Salone del Mobile 2025, Wilson will present “Mother,” an installation dedicated to Michelangelo’s Pietà Rondanini. This work features a continuous 30-minute sequence of music, light, and images, engaging in a dialogue with Estonian composer Arvo Pärt’s “Stabat Mater.” Additionally, he will curate “The Night Before. Object Chairs Opera” for the opening night of the 63rd edition of the Salone at Teatro alla Scala, with the Teatro alla Scala Orchestra conducted by Michele Spotti.
Opening image: Robert Wilson a The Watermill Center. Photo © Bronwen Sharp