In his early career, during the late 1960s and early 70s, Robert Irwin followed in the footsteps of the abstract expressionists. He started as a painter, but quickly adopted objects and materials that would allow him to explore, with greater breadth, notions of perception and the effects of light and
Trained in philosophy at Harvard under Stanley Cavell before the cinema at AFI, Malick’s slim oeuvre foregrounds this inheritance: each of his four features to date is a period piece of American history; each trains an eye on the natural world (and its relationship with humans and human technologie