Motherwell Collages
From Motherwell’s “Art of Collage” at Paul Kasmin in New York
Robert Motherwell was one of the radical maestros of the “New York School”—a term he himself coined—who, along with Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Mark Rothko, turned Abstract Expressionism into the reigning movement in art in the United States and throughout the world in the post-Word War II era. Among the abstract artists who were his peers, Motherwell was considered the master of collage, a form he was encouraged to explore by Peggy Guggenheim, whose Art of This Century Gallery in New York gave Motherwell a solo show in 1944 that was key in launching his career.
The Paul Kasmin Gallery in New York recently presented “Robert Motherwell: The Art of Collage,” a lifelong survey of the artist’s love affair with the medium. In the way that collage incorporates found objects, it may have set the stage for Pop Art and other more conceptual movements in the future. Take, for example the mailing label Motherwell turned into the centerpiece of The Irregular Heart (1974), the image on PROVOKR’s home page and Art page for this article; it was actually taken off a package of heart medicine (thus the title) sent to Motherwell’s Provincetown, Massachusetts, studio. The label is an everyday object that in the artist’s vision becomes something much more profound. (The Irregular Heart is acrylic, pasted cardboard, pasted paper and clear plastic tape on Upson board, 25.5 x 19.5 inches; artwork © Estate of Jules Olitski / Licensed by VAGA, New York.)
Critic Hilton Kramer of the New York Times, in reviewing Motherwell’s work in a 1968 Whitney Museum show, declared that the artist’s ambition was in “restoring collage to its original position as the medium of a purely pictorial imagination.” Whatever its aesthetic aims, Motherwell’s artwork is iconic and spectacularly beautiful. Enjoy the Motherwell works PROVOKR has assembled from “The Art of Collage” at the Paul Kasmin Gallery.
Though he was a master of collage, Motherwell created art in a wide array of media. Here’s a video montage of some of his most memorable works, set to “Ne chantez pas la mort” by Léo Ferré:
