Artist

Robbert Flick

born Amersfoort, Netherlands 1939
Also known as
  • Bob Flick
  • Robbert F. Flick
Born
Amersfoort, Netherlands
Active in
  • Canada
  • Inglewood, California, United States
  • Claremont, California, United States
Nationalities
  • American
Biography

Born in Amersfoort, Holland, 1939. Currently resides in Claremont, California. Flick is professor of studio arts at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. He received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1982 and 1984. Recent publications include Robbert Flick: Sequential Views 1980-1986, (Gallery Min, Tokyo, Japan 1987).

Merry A. Foresta, Stephen Jay Gould, and Karal Ann Marling Between Home and Heaven: Contemporary American Landscape Photography (Washington, D.C. and Albuquerque, New Mexico: The National Museum of American Art in association with the University of New Mexico Press, 1992)

Videos

Exhibitions

Media - 1985.53.1 - SAAM-1985.53.1_1 - 82364
Landscapes In Passing: Photographs by Steve Fitch, Robbert Flick, and Elaine Mayes
July 25, 2013–February 23, 2014
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The American landscape has inspired generations of artists, but the 48 photographs in this presentation— by Steve Fitch, Robbert Flick and Elaine Mayes— are a far cry from traditional representations of the subject. Where painters of the Hudson River School saw the sublime and survey photographers of the 19th century discerned supernatural majesty in America’s landscapes, Fitch, Flick and Mayes find evidence of civilization’s rapid expansion into suburbs and exurbs. This view updated the idyllic portrayal of the American landscape that had persisted into the 20th century, notably in photographs by Ansel Adams. Informed by the reality of the interstate highway system and the increasingly mediated culture of 1970s America, these photographers depict the country in passing, as drive-through scenery rather than entrancing wilderness. Their images, created between 1971 and 1980, foreshadow today’s even more media-saturated environment and the telegraphic relationship to the natural world that it encourages.