When somebody visits the Broad museum for the primary time, they often ask one in every of three questions, says curator Ed Schad: The place is the Infinity Room, the place is the Balloon Canine or the place is the desk?
“The table” is a reference to artist Robert Therrien’s 1994 sculpture, “Under the Table,” which was the very first piece of artwork put in on the museum when it opened in 2015. It consists of a 20-foot-long picket desk with six matching chairs every almost 10 ft tall. Photographs of museumgoers standing and grinning beneath it litter social media.
“We want that question to turn into a profound understanding of the man who made it,” Schad continues, referring to the largest-ever solo museum present of Therrien’s work — titled “Robert Therrien: This Is a Story” — scheduled to open Nov. 22 and run by April 5, 2026.
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Therrien is legendary for his large-scale sculptures — towering stacks of vertigo-inducing dishes, big beards, monumental folding chairs and outsized pots and pans in humongous cabinets — however each bit is a “trap door,” says Schad.
“You may think you’ve got it right away and then the floor falls out,” he says.
Paul Cherwick and Dean Anes, who’re co-directors of the artist’s property and labored intently with Therrien for years earlier than his loss of life in 2019, elaborate on Schad’s evaluation.
Big stacks of pots and pans created by Robert Therrien are on show at his downtown L.A. studio. “He didn’t talk about blowing things up,” says one in every of Therrien’s property managers, Dean Anes. “He talked about creating an environment that you had a reaction to.”
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
“He didn’t talk about blowing things up. He talked about creating an environment that you had a reaction to,” Anes says throughout a latest tour of Therrien’s studio and condo close to downtown L.A. “So much of it is about his childhood memories and experiences. And his interest, I feel, was to be able to give viewers an opportunity to trigger their own childhood memories and feelings and experiences through the work.”
Standing beneath a Therrien desk does, certainly, produce obscure — typically unsettling — recollections of being a small human in a not-yet-understood world of massive issues. If Therrien’s sculptures symbolize the unknown, he didn’t speak about it, says Cherwick. The artist saved his underlying intentions to himself.
Therrien’s legacy is finest examined by his relationship — and significance — with sculpture in L.A., says Schad.
“It sounds grandiose, but it’s true, Los Angeles is one of the best places to make sculpture on Earth,” he says, rattling off a who’s who of well-known L.A.-based sculptors, together with Robert Irwin, Helen Pashgian, Larry Bell and John McCracken, who was additionally Therrien’s pal.
The listing of L.A. artists who’ve made “fantastic contributions to the global discussion about sculpture goes on and on and on,” says Schad. “Robert Therrien was not only a part of that conversation, but was vitally present.”
A stack of big dishes subsequent to a blue oval within the upstairs gallery of Robert Therrien’s downtown L.A. studio. The dishes create a sense of vertigo when a viewer walks round them.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
Therrien confirmed his work with famed artwork sellers Leo Castelli and Konrad Fischer, and was featured within the 1985 Whitney Biennial and the 1995 Carnegie Worldwide. He was additionally one of many artists that Eli and Edythe Broad collected most. There are 18 Therrien items of their assortment, spanning his total profession. The Broads first met and befriended Therrien as a nervous younger artist who introduced a poodle for emotional help throughout their first assembly within the Seventies.
The upcoming exhibition on the Broad will function 120 items of labor, together with sculpture, images, portray, drawing and different ephemera, occupying all the 10,000-square-foot floor ground. It’ll embrace an intimate sequence of never-before-seen smoke indicators — cartoonish puffs of white smoke — fabricated on stretched automobile upholstery that Therrien made when he was dying of most cancers and will barely carry a pen.
“When you look at his career as a whole, it speaks in a very intimate way to what Los Angeles is — and was — as a city,” Schad says. Therrien was wild and experimental within the Seventies, as a part of a feral neighborhood of artists who interacted and shared concepts with scientists at Caltech and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This led to experimentation with the revolutionary strategies of fabrication that might later outline the scene.
“The city has so much space as well,” says Anes. “Early on, of course, rents were cheaper. You could get an industrial space and you could be left alone. Bob carved this space out — created it himself — and he didn’t have neighbors. He was here by himself, developing ideas and working on things.”
Robert Therrien’s paintbrushes hold in his studio. The solitary artist created artwork in any respect hours of the day and evening.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
The artist Cherwick and Anes describe was a quiet, reserved man with a wonderful humorousness. A solitary determine who most well-liked working alone and wanted massive doses of St. John’s wort to get by days when his studio buzzed with individuals. He was 6 ft, 2 inches, wore a measurement 12 shoe and sported a go well with jacket that was barely too large. He was a ruminative thinker, and sometimes introduced a ebook as a present when he visited somebody.
“He had a sort of Fred Gwynne quality to him,” says Cherwick, referring to the actor who performed Herman Munster within the ’60s sitcom “The Munsters.”
“He was very sweet,” provides Anes. “I kind of refer to him as your favorite odd uncle.”
Above all, they are saying, Therrien was a consummate employee.
“That’s all he lived to do,” says Cherwick, trying across the studio. “He was in here working all the time — at all times. He made his whole life and existence about just being here.”
Therrien’s studio was inbuilt 1990 however designed to resemble an industrial, institution-like area from the ’30s or ’40s. The outside partitions are his signature salmon pink and the bogs are nearly a century previous. The bottom ground was his artistic playground, stuffed with provides, instruments and huge items of artwork, together with an enormous beard that greets friends upon arrival.
Robert Therrien would host lengthy lunches at his kitchen after excursions, usually serving salad out of an enormous bowl.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
There’s a Shaker-inspired gallery upstairs with ceilings which might be nearly 16 ft tall. Therrien by no means opened the gallery to the general public however usually hosted museum teams and curators, taking them to his adjoining condo afterward and lingering over an extended lunch of salad served from an enormous bowl.
For the reason that studio was constructed earlier than live-work areas have been frequent, Therrien needed to design his modest condo as a “watchman’s quarters” as a way to adhere to constructing code. It contains a classic kitchen with pink-and-white tiling, drab olive partitions and industrial brown flooring.
The “heroes” that impressed his big dishes relaxation on the counter and the affect for “Under the Table” is his precise eating desk. Polaroids, knick knacks and mementos are fastidiously organized in numerous tableaus — a lot as he left them. A closet-sized area throughout from the lavatory homes cabinets of vinyl data, tapes and DVDs. Stereolab, Duke Ellington, “Sounds of Halloween” and a mixtape labeled “Bob Foo Young” are among the many eclectic auditory choice. Therrien liked music and had the studio wired with audio system. Earlier than that, he put a tape deck on a rolling cart.
Although Robert Therrien was 6 ft 2 and wore a measurement 12 shoe, he most well-liked a mattress that didn’t match him in scale.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Instances)
His bed room all the time surprises friends, says Cherwick, moving into the small, windowless rectangular area. It options solely a single twin mattress coated with a easy quilt on a severe-looking iron body. A small crucifix is affixed to the wall above, and a rolling, pink-topped hospital desk sits on the far facet of the room.
“This is the last thing everybody sees,” says Anes. “The last statement.”
“He was a big guy … that was not enough bed for him,” provides Cherwick. “He became out of scale with his own existence.”
Robert Therrien: This Is a Story
The place: The Broad, 221 S. Grand Ave., L.A.
When: 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays; 11 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursdays; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; closed Mondays
Tickets: Pre-sale tickets obtainable now, $15
Contact: thebroad.org
