Robert Cumming: Conceptual Fabricator (1968-1980)

Robert Cumming: Conceptual Fabricator (1968–1980)

Conceived for Art Basel 2025 Feature sector, Robert Cumming: Conceptual Fabricator (1968-1980) is a rigorous study of the interdisciplinary links in Robert Cumming’s work through a presentation of a select group of rare works of outstanding quality, including ones presented to the public for the first time at Art Basel 2025.

A painter, photographer, sculptor and draughtsman, Robert Cumming (1943-2021) created a vast body of conceptual art to which many institutions have devoted exhibitions, including a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York (1998). A seasoned fabricator, long fascinated by the art of Renaissance architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi and his ability to disrupt logic, Cumming created meticulous drawings and elementary sculptures to question, mainly with photography and painting as the final result, the logic of physical phenomena and the order of everyday objects.

Introduced to conceptual art by his mentor Douglas Huebler, Robert Cumming was a prominent member of the Californian conceptual art scene in the 1970s. Although his photographic work, produced mainly between 1968 and 1980, is highly regarded and housed in dozens of museum collections, Robert Cumming’s art can only be fully appreciated in the light of the other disciplines he simultaneously embraced.

This extensive presentation brings together two of the three large photorealist paintings ever produced by Robert Cumming—Motorized Comma (Detail) (1978) and Untitled (Mat Cutter) (1978)—a seminal installation questionning the relationship between photography and sculpture—120 Alternatives (1970)—, a significant selection of vintage single and polyptych photographs printed by the artist between 1968 and 1980 including a previously unknown unique set of fourteen photographs offering a playful take on a Los Angeles landmark—Star Distortion. Hollywood Boulevard (1971)—, along with extremely rare corresponding preparatory drawings.

Beginning in the early 1980s, Robert Cumming gradually shifted away from photography to focus primarily on painting—a period that was also the subject of institutional exhibitions, including at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C. (1988), and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego (1993). In 2026, the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, California—a landmark institution for conceptual art a the turn of the 1960s where many fellow artists held major exhibitions—will dedicate a retrospective to Robert Cumming. The two photorealist paintings presented this year at Art Basel will be included in the exhibition.