Robert Watts (artist)
| Robert Watts | |
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Robert Watts at the Flux-Harpsichord Concert, Berlin, 1976
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| Born |
Robert Marshall Watts June 14, 1923 Burlington, Iowa |
| Died | September 2, 1988 (aged 65) Martins Creek, Pennsylvania |
| Nationality | American |
| Education | Columbia University |
| Known for | Conceptual art, Mail art, Performance art |
| Movement | Fluxus |
Robert Watts was an American artist best known for his work as a member of the international group of artists Fluxus. Born in Burlington, Iowa June 14, 1923, he became Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Jersey in 1953, a post he kept until 1984. In the 1950s, he was in close contact with other teachers at Rutgers including Allan Kaprow, Geoffrey Hendricks and Roy Lichtenstein. This has led some critics to claim that pop art and conceptual art began at Rutgers.
He organised the proto-fluxus Yam Festival, May 1963 with George Brecht, and was one of the main protagonists, along with George Maciunas, in turning SoHo, New York, into an artist's quarter. He died Friday September 2, 1988 of lung cancer in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania.
He was also known as Bob Watts or Doctor Bob.
After earning a degree in mechanical engineering at the University of Louisville, Watts served as an officer in the United States Navy aboard aircraft carriers. Watts left the Navy and moved to New York in 1948, where he studied art at the Art Students League and later at Columbia University from where he gained a degree in the History of Art, majoring in pre-Columbian and non-Western Art. After becoming Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, 1953, he started to exhibit works in a proto-pop style. He participated in Pop Art shows such as New Forms, New Media exhibition in 1960 at Martha Jackson's Gallery; the Popular Image exhibition at the Washington Gallery of Art in 1963; and the 1964 American Supermarket exhibition at New York's Bianchini Gallery, which also featured Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg and Tom Wesselmann. After exhibiting at Leo Castelli's Gallery in 1964, Watts turned his back on the gallery system, and concentrated instead on the anti-art of the emerging New York avant-garde centred around George Maciunas.
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