Richard Alpert (artist)

Richard Alpert (born April 11, 1947) is an American sculptor, abstract filmmaker, and performance artist. He is also known for his work in "Generating Art" and received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant in Sculpture in 1979. In 1986 he was nearly killed in a fire that destroyed his studio and much of his artwork.<ref name=":1" />

Career

Education

Richard Alpert was born on April 11, 1947, in New York City, New York. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in studio arts from the University of Pittsburgh in 1970, and an MFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1973.<ref name=about>Template:Cite web</ref>

Career in the 1970s

In the 1970s Alpert's conceptual and performance art included the performance sculpture Strategy for a Dance; the video works Post Time, A Circular Route, The Opacity of Order, and Facture;<ref name=BERK /> the article and collection South of the Slot;<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> the printed works Women: On Our Way and Stretch;<ref>Loeffler and Tong, 140.</ref> and the performances Hand Generated Light,<ref>Loeffler and Tong, 127.</ref> Probe,<ref>Loeffler and Tong, 131.</ref> Finger,<ref>Loeffler and Tong, 197.</ref> and Sylph.<ref>Loeffler and Tong, 187.</ref> In 1976 Mir Bahadur wrote in Artweek that Hand Generated Light was created by Alpert locking himself in a closet for three hours cranking a manual electrical generator keeping a tiny light aglow on the outside of the door. The article described this work, as well as Spent Time, Spent Energy and Sylph by the term "Generating Art", whereby the subject of the work itself was the generation of the art being created.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Another of his major works from this period of his career is Sound Sculpture.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1975 Alpert was interviewed as a part of a Museum of Conceptual Art in San Francisco (MOCA) sponsored history of art project titled 11 Video Interviews produced by Jeanette Willison,<ref>Loeffler and Tong, 185.</ref> and his video work was included with another MOCA video compilation titled A Tight Thirteen Minutes that same year, showing one-minute color video works from thirteen artists.<ref>Loeffler and Tong, 228.</ref> During this period his work appeared in magazines including Artweek<ref>Loeffler and Tong, 126 and 139.</ref> and Arts Magazine.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Alpert received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant in Sculpture in 1979.<ref name=about />

Career in the 1980s

Alpert's work was described by University of California, Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive in 1980 as "concerned with performance sculpture, video and concept-oriented drawing and object sculpture".<ref name=BERK>Template:Cite web</ref> That year an exhibition of his work was held at La Mamelle, Time Expands to Fit the Mold.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 1984 Alpert stated that his work was influenced not only by the performative arts but also by science.<ref>Loeffler and Tong, 501.</ref> He wrote specifically that he has been inspired by Boyle's law as well as the second law of thermodynamics.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>

On April 4, 1986, at 3:30pm EST Alpert's collection of work up until that point was largely lost in an explosion that killed nine people and injured sixteen. During the explosion at the building that housed Alpert's studio, he was working on a new sculpture when the fire began raging on the floors below him. Alpert survived the blaze that took over 150 firefighters to contain. Alpert described the fire to a journalist that day: "There was no warning. There was a gigantic explosion. It went from daylight to pitch black. I got out because the roof collapsed around me."<ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Career in the 2000s

I think that all of my work ties into sculptural ideas whether video, performances, and obviously creating objects. All the art that I produce, or have produced, I feel can be interpreted as sculpture, even the work that might be seen as painting.<ref>This is a quote from the 2016 interview that Alpert did with the poet, writer and political activist Bobby Coleman. It has been published online in the magazine Experimental Cinema.Template:Nonspecific The discussion centered around the video “Ball on Track”.</ref>

Since then Alpert has showed his work with a series of videos based on images recorded from a high-speed train journey in Spain, AVE (Alta Velocidad España) variations #1-10. Individual videos from this series have been screened in Europe, Cuba and India.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Alpert has also published three other books based on his photographs and videos over past ten years.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="wwcove" /> He also restored a 1967 16mm film made whilst a student at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Alpert continues to produce object sculpture, photography and graphic (drawings) artwork.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

He featured in Light on the Walls of Life: A Tribute Anthology to Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Template:ISBN published by Jambu Press, San Francisco, March 24, 2022. The image of his sculpture "Open the Bomb Bay Doors, Hal", appears on page 43.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Published works

Warm Water Cove is a photo-book by Richard Alpert he published in 2015. His website describes this collection as "… a celebration of another San Francisco; one far off the beaten path and excluded from travel brochures and TripAdvisor. This side of San Francisco was certainly not host to the 'summer of love' nor 'little cable cars…'".<ref name="wwcove">Template:Cite web</ref> Template:Clear

External links

• Template:Official website
• In 2019 he was interviewed at KPCA community radio in Petaluma, California by programmer Andy Sewell. Excerpts from the interview covering topics such as: the 2019 AVE videos, the Template:Not a typo restoration of the film Barrels and the 1986 Bayview Industrial Park, San Francisco fire and explosion. These are available on his website.
• Template:Cite web Interview with SiteWorks UK
• Template:Cite web Review with Film International (January 2021)