Robert Wilson, renowned theatre director, playwright and artist, has died at the age of 83.
His death was confirmed by the Watermill Center, an arts hub Wilson founded in Water Mill, New York. He died peacefully after “a brief but acute illness”.
Wilson’s career in theatre started in the late 1960s when he started the performance art group the Byrd Hoffman School of Byrds in New York, named after a teacher who helped him with a stammer. He went on to create the four-act opera Einstein on the Beach with Philip Glass in the mid-1970s.
After the show toured Europe, Wilson wanted to put it on in New York and decided that the Metropolitan Opera House would be the best venue but they said no so he rented it himself. “It cost $90,000, a lot of money,” he said to the Guardian in 2012. “It sold out, so we put on a second performance. It was a crazy mixture of people who turned up, traditional opera-goers and people who had never been before. Even so, we ended up in debt, but those performances really established us both.”
His credits also included silent operas such as Deafman Glance and the 12-hour The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin.
He directed the work of others including William Shakespeare’s King Lear and The Tempest and Anton Chekhov’s Swansong. Most recently he directed Ubu in Palma de Mallorca and Isabelle Huppert in Mary Said What She Said in London.
“Theatre is about one thing,” he said in 2019. “And if it’s not about one thing – it’s too complicated.”
As a visual artist, Wilson has created sculptures, designs for furniture and drawings. In 1993, he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale for his sculptural work.
“I don’t think I’m very good at explaining my work,” he said in 2022 when he returned for the 57th Venice Biennale. “But it is something you experience.”
Recognition of his talents also included a Drama Desk award in 1971 for direction, a Pulitzer prize nomination for drama in 1986 and an Olivier award for best opera in 2013.
His many big-name collaborators included Tom Waits, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Martin McDonagh, Allen Ginsberg, Laurie Anderson, Tilda Swinton, Jim Jarmusch and Lady Gaga.
Wilson also worked with Gaga during her Artpop era, designing the set for her 2013 MTV music video awards performance and using her in an exhibition at the Louvre. “The concentration, the power she has, it’s total,” he said of Gaga to the Guardian in 2016.
Wilson is survived by his sister Suzanne and his niece Lori and memorials will be announced soon. “His works have touched, inspired and influenced generations of artists and audiences since the 1960s,” a statement from the Watermill Center reads.
