Walter Robinson
Civic Lessons, 2008
Wood and plaster
60 × 5 ¾  × 6 ½ inches
Courtesy of Catharine Clark Gallery

Retail value: $6,000

Walter Robinson works in a range of materials and language often plays a significant role in his art. He describes his worldview as one of “wonder and dread.” Robinson begins his deeply intuitive creative process with an image from the real world or his personal history that provokes a visceral response, which he then expands critically, formally, and analytically.

Civic Lessons, 2008, is a trenchant critique of contemporary political culture. Composed of three pencils, each topped with an eraser in the shape of President John F. Kennedy’s head, the complex sculpture relates both to the artist’s personal experience and the broader culture.

Having grown up during the Cold War era in a socially and politically active community in Palo Alto, California, the artist remembers the hope and idealism that JFK inspired in his parents’ generation. The pencils are inscribed with the famous line from Kennedy’s inaugural address: “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.” Jamie Brunson, an artist and critic, said, “the brightly colored pastel pencils are precisely the kinds of learning tools that a child of his age in that era would have used for a classroom civic lesson. But in choosing to inscribe them with the key phrase from Kennedy's inaugural address, Robinson also consciously addresses—and possibly challenges—the self-centered values of a contemporary ‘me’ generation.”  By showing the Kennedy-head erasers partially "erased" or worn down, Robinson refers obliquely to Kennedy’s fatal head wound, but also, more subtly, to the gradual "erasure" or diminishment of the values and ideals JFK advocated.

Walter Robinson currently lives and works in San Francisco. He received his MFA from Lone Mountain College, San Francisco, and his BFA from the San Francisco Academy of Art. He also studied at the California College of the Arts and Crafts, Oakland, California. His work has received critical attention from a number of publications including Artforum, ArtReview, Vanity Fair, and the San Francisco Chronicle. He has had solo exhibitions in California, New York, and Berlin, and has participated in many group exhibitions around the United States.  His work is represented in the public collections of di Rosa, Napa, California; the Djerassi Resident Artists’ Program, Woodside, California; the Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Lincoln, Nebraska; and the San Jose Museum of Art. 

Robinson’s Melt, 2008, a popular favorite with SJMA’s visitors, was on view earlier this year in the exhibition Renegade Humor. 

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