Diary
Remembering Walter Robinson
(1950–2025)
Portrait of Walter Robinson by © Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. All Rights Reserved
- 12 February 2025
Ursula magazine mourns the loss of Walter Robinson—painter, critic, chronicler and wry conscience of the New York art world for more than fifty years.
One of the founders of the bookstore Printed Matter, an early member of the pioneering art collective Colab and a founder of the punk-underground magazine Art-Rite, Walter Robinson seemed to know everyone and to be present at every opening, usually with a twinkle in his eye and a demand to see the price list so that he could publish it and skewer a pretension or two.
Art-Rite Magazine Cover, Alan Suicide, Issue #13, 1977
Walter Robinson, New Years, 2023 © Walter Robinson. Courtesy Sébastien Bertrand, Geneva
Robinson was a wise and clear-eyed writer who carried from his native Tulsa, Oklahoma, a feel for the sound of plain language with a twist of the poetic. He was also profoundly funny, especially about his own work and its place in the commercial art world. In an interview with Artspace magazine in 2014, he said:
“The art market talks to me. I only just realized that the other day. It tells me everything. My problem is that I’m too neurotic to listen, at least much of the time.”