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Robert Motherwell
39 quotes
“We must remember that ideas modify feelings. The anti-intellectualism of English and American artists has led them to the error of not perceiving the connection between the feeling of modern forms and modern ideas. By feeling is meant the response of the 'body-and-mind' as a whole to the events of reality.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Modern Painter's World, ed. Robert Motherwell , Dyn, Nov. 1942, p. 9
“Plastic automatism.. ..as employed by modern masters, like Masson, Miro, [both artists of Surrealism] and Picasso, is actually very little a question of the unconsciousness. It is much more a plastic weapon with which to invent new forms. As such it is one of the twentieth century greatest formal inventions.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Modern Painter's World, Robert Motherwell , Dyn, Nov. 1942, p. 13
“Great art is never extreme. Criticism moves in a false direction, as does art, when it aspires to be a social science.. .In this world modern artists form a kind of spiritual underground.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Motherwell's writing in 1944; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker', on 'Artstory'
“[modern art is the story of certain peoples'] desire to get rid of what is dead in human experience, to get rid of concepts, whether aesthetic or metaphysical or ethical or social, that, being garbed in the costumes of the past, get in the way of their enjoyment.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture at Mount Holyoke College, August 1944; later published as 'A Tour of the Sublime', in 'Tiger's Eye', 15 Dec. 1948; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker', on 'Artstory'
“One is to know that art is not national, that to be merely an American or a French artist is to be nothing; to fail to overcome one's initial environment is never to reach the human.. .Thus when we say one of the ideals of modern art has been internationalism, it is.. ..as a natural consequence of dealing with reality on a certain level. [quote in 1946]”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 439
“One cuts and chooses and shifts and pastes, and sometimes tears off and begins again.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is Cezanne's feeling that determined the form of his pictorial structure. It is his pictorial structure that gives off his feeling. If all his pictorial structures were to disappear from the world, so would a certain feeling..”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every intelligent modern painter carries the whole culture of modern painting in his head.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 22
“Don't underestimate the influence of the Surrealist state of mind on the young American painters [like his artist-friends William Baziotes and w:Roberto Matta in those days.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Abstract Painting, Thomas Hess, New York, Viking 1951, p. 132
“..there is a real Dada strain in the minds of the New York School of abstract painters that has emerged in the last decade.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Dada Painters and Poets, Schultz, Wittenborn, New York 1951, p. xiii
“[the process of painting..] ..is conceived of as an adventure, without preconceived ideas on the part of persons of intelligence, sensibility, and passion. Fidelity to what occurs between oneself and the canvas, no matter how unexpected, becomes central.. ..the major decisions in the process of painting are on the grounds of truth, not taste...”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The School of New York, exhibition catalogue, Perls Gallery, 1951; as quoted in the New York School – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row Publishers, 1978, p. 46
“Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come in to existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience - intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1951; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker', on 'Artstory'
“The emergence of abstract art is a sign that there are still men of feeling in the world. Men who know how to respect and follow their inner feelings, no matter how irrational or absurd they may first appear. From their perspective, it is the social world that tends to appear irrational and absurd.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1951; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker', on 'Artstory'
“..no true artist ends with the style that he expected to have when he began,. ..it is only by giving oneself up completely to the painting medium that one finds oneself and one's own style.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The School of New York, exhibition catalogue, Perls Gallery, 1951; as quoted in the New York School – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row Publishers, 1978, p. 46
“..a plastic weapon with which to invent new forms.. [remark in 1951 on the concept of automatism ].”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 79
“It would be very difficult to formulate a position in which there were no external relations. I cannot imagine any structure being defined as though it only has internal meaning.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Modern Artists in America, First Series, R. Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt and B. Karpel eds., 1952; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 40
“..for most painters nowadays [1954] examination is self-examination – this is all that we are accustomed to – while the relation to the audience is a social matter. And it is our pictures, not ourselves, that live the social life and meet the public.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A modern painter may have many audiences or one or none; he paints in relation to none of them, though he longs for the audience of other modern painters.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I believe that painter's judgments of painting are first ethical, then aesthetic, the aesthetic judgments flowing from an ethical context. Doubtless no painter systematically thinks this way; but it does seem to me to be basically what happens when modern painters judge any new manifestations of painting.. .An artist's 'art' is just his consciousness, developed slowly and painstakingly with many mistakes en route. How dare they collect those ugly early Van Gogh's like trophies...”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think he Pollock responded to rhythm more than anything else in art. Indeed, perhaps it is not to much to assert that his greatest works are marked by the intensity and violence of his rhythm, modified by an incorruptible respect for the work's flat surface, an art masculine and lyrical and, as in a Celtic dance, measured, despite its original primitive impulse. That he also meant to me, his rhythm...”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1967 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Jackson Pollock: An Artists' Symposium', in 'ARTnews', Vol. 66, no. 2 April 1967
“I begin [a painting] from an impulse, an intense and irrational desire that takes you over, prompting you to start moving. And from experience, with some knowledge of what moves oneself, I think it's not altogether arbitrary what one begins with.. ..certainly implicit partially is the feeling, not that 'I am going to paint something I know' by 'through the act of painting I'm going to find out exactly how I feel'.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as cited in Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 111
“In my case, I find a blank canvas so beautiful that that to work immediately, in relation to how beautiful the canvas is as such, is inhibiting and, for me, demands 'too much to quickly'; so that my tendency is to get the canvas 'dirt', so to speak, in one way or another, and then, so to speak 'work in reverse', and try to bring it back to an equivalent of the original clarity and perfection of the canvas, that one began on...”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as cited in Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 111
“When I was young I was more obsessed with the materiality of things.. ..today I am more interested in air and atmosphere. This is why I deliberately treat space ambivalently. For example, an orange painting with white lines might be viewed as an orange wall with white lines, but the orange colour is no less atmospheric for all of that. It abounds white light, and the white line vibrate in a deep space, too, as well as an orange 'wall'.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Irmeline Lebeer, in 'Recent Work', Princeton Art Museum, 1973 pp. 10-13
“I love painting the way one loves the body of a women.. ..if painting must have an intellectual and social background, it is only to enhance and make more rich an essentially warm, simple, radiant act, for which everyone has a need.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with W.C. Seitz, in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983
“When I first saw the work of Matisse I knew that was for me.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Conversation with W.C. Seitz, in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983
“I begin a painting with a series of mistakes. The painting comes out of the correction of mistakes by feeling. I begin with shapes and colors which are not related internally nor to the external world; I work without images. Ultimate unifications come about through modulations of the surface by innumerable trials and efforts. The final picture is the process arrested at the moment when what I was looking for flashes into view.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1983 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cconversation with W.C. Seitz, in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 94
“I take an elegy to be a funeral lamentation or funeral song for something one cared about. The 'Spanish Elegies' [his most famous series of paintings, related to the Spanish Civil War] are not 'political' but my private insistence that a terrible death happened that should not be forgot. They are as eloquent as I could make them. But the pictures are also general metaphors of the contrast between life and death and their interrelation.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Abstract Expressionism, Creators and Critics, ed. Clifford Ross, Abrahams Publishers, New York 1990, p. 111
“Among other ends, modern art is related to the ideal of Internationalism.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950's, An Illustrated Survey, Herskovic, Marika; nyschoolpress, 2003, p.238
“I hung Baziote's [painting] show with him at Peggy's in 1944. After it was up and we had stood in silence looking at it for a while, I noticed he had turned white.. .Suddenly he [Baziotes] looked at me and said: 'You're the one I trust; if you tell me the show is no good, I'll take it right down and cancel it.'.. ..you see, at the opposite side of the coin of the abstract expressionist's ambition and of out not giving a damn, was also not knowing whether our pictures were even pictures, let alone whether they were any good...”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: William Baziotes – paintings and drawings, curated by Michael Preble, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 2004, p. 181
“All my life I've been working on the work - every canvas a sentence or paragraph of it. Each picture is only an approximation of what you want. That's the beauty of being an artist; you can never make the absolute statement, but the desire to do so as an approximation keeps you going.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991
“You let the brush take over and in a way follow its own head, and in the brush doing what it's doing, it will stumble on what one couldn't by oneself.. .It's essential to fracture influences in the same way that free association in psychoanalysis helps to fracture one's social self-deceptions.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quote, as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991
“Compared with Brancusi, Matisse, Miro, I'm a barbarian. If people would understand the barbaric force of my paintings, instead of always pointing out how well I understand Picasso. I'm a Viking who has read French literature.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991
“Here we are at the antipode of automatism [invention from Surrealism] and mechanism, and no less distant from the cunning way of reason. In the action of the machine, in which everything is repeated and predetermined, accident is an abrupt negation.. .. [the] excess of ink flowing capriciously in thin black rivulets.. ..this line deflected by a sudden jar, this drop of water diluting a contour – all these are the sudden invasion of the unexpected in a world where it has a right to its proper place. [Motherwell is quoting here the comments of w:Henri Focillon on Japanese legends of 'accidentalism']”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1951 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Dada Painters and Poets, Schultz, Wittenborn, New York 1951, p. xxxvii
“Indeed, our society, which has seemed so freedom-giving and passive in its attitudes toward the artist really makes extraordinary demands upon him: on the one side, to be free in some vague spiritual sense, free to act only as an artist, and yet on the other side to be rigorously tested as to whether the freedom he has achieved is great enough to be more solidly dependable than a government's financial structure.. .No wonder that modern painters, in view of these curious relations to society, have taken art matters into their own hands, decides for themselves what art is, what its subjects are to be, and how they are to be treated. Art like love is an active process of growth and development.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) said by 1991 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Before 1940 there was relatively little abstract art in America. Most of it was relatively geometric versions of Cubism, or of Mondrian and De Stijl, or of Arp reliefs, and the like. So that when our painting [of the artists of the New York School: Abstract Expressionism first appeared, the critics at once realized that to describe it as 'abstract' would be misleading.. .In America, the word (I suppose taken from Germany) for something highly emotional is 'expressionist', and some critic, either in the New Yorker or the New York Times then called it Abstract Expressionism, meaning that this was a very emotional art, but an abstract one.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: first published in 'Metro', 1962; as cited in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 80
“Well, Mondrian is absolute, and is pure, and those are real aspirations of our [American Abstract Expressionism art]. When I say 'pure', I don't mean 'clean' . I don't think Mondrian himself did; I knew him when he was here [New York] during the war. He went to an exhibition by the Surrealist, Tanguy, and was asked what he thought, and he said he would like Tanguy's pictures better if they were dirtier, that for him they were to clean... .I think he meant that when they were to 'clean', they were essentially lifeless, statuesque, unrevised. As for me, I must say, Mondrian's painting is intensely rhythmic, warm, passionate - restricted as the means ostensibly seem to me.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: first published in 'Metro', 1962; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 81
“I mean, the official definition of Surrealism is to make a work automatically without a priori aesthetic or moral conditions, which is exactly what we do [artist in New York School / Abstract Expressionism]. At the same time Surrealism was an assault, - with a few exceptions: Giacometti, Arp and Miro - on the 'purity' of painting. I mean mean, on making painting - means themselves speak, without reliance on literature; and that second insistence of Surrealism, Americans really rejected. So that historically.. ..Abstract Expressionism is in part, I think, a fusion of certain Surrealist means, above all plastic 'automatism' with the Cubist's insistence that the picture speaks as a picture in strictly pictorial language.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1962 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: first published in 'Metro', 1962; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 82
“And finally after months of really a cold war [between his father and him] he made a very generous agreement with me that if I would get a Ph.D. so that I would be equipped to teach in a college as an economic insurance, he would give me fifty dollars a week for the rest of my life to do whatever I wanted to do on the assumption that with fifty dollars I could not starve but it would be no inducement to last. So with that agreed on Harvard then - it was actually the last year - Harvard still had the best philosophy school in the world. And since I had taken my degree at Stanford in philosophy, and since he didn't care what the Ph.D. was in, I went on to Harvard.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1971 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 'Oral history interview with Robert Motherwell', 1971 Nov. 24 - 1974 May 1, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
“We [the American Abstract-expressionist artists of the 1940's] were formed by the Depression [1930's], when the American dream lay in pieces on the floor. The possibility of making money was inconceivable to us. America was innocent in relation to modern art, and no one cared. The reigning painters in America were very parochial in relation to the international tradition.. .What held us together was our ambition to use the standards of international modernism as a gauge, not those of Thomas Hart Benton or Grant Wood or Guy Pene du Bois. We did have a terrible struggle, but not for success. It was to make painting that would stand up under international scrutiny, and all the rest was a byproduct.”
Robert Motherwell (1915–1991) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: as cited by Grace Glueck, in 'Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies', by Grace Glueck, 'New York Times, 18 July 1991