Robert Motherwell

Notes on: Robert Motherwell, with selections from the artist's writings, by Frank O'Hara. New York, Museum of Modern Art, 1965.

Frank O'Hara's monograph on Robert Motherwell portrays a man of immense personal charm, if a somewhat reticent charm compared to Jackson Pollock say. In the selections from his writings (chosen by Bill Berkson), there is talk about stubbornness, objectivity, openness, human contact and other values not that often in the forefront of artistic credos. Motherwell evidences what might be a deep knowledge of poetry and literature, philosophy and psychology. “I love Hopkins' insistence on particularization,” he says in one of his statements. It isn't the perception that Hopkins was a detailing poet of specific and material beauty, but that he is insistent about it that is the fine touch. Motherwell's work is political and big, only one of which is unusual afor an abstract expressionist.

O'Hara's writing seems a little clumsy from time to time: “With the advent of war, a heterogeneous number of American artists whose only common passion was the necessity of contemporary art's being Modern began to emerge as a movement. . .” or “Motherwell's special contribution to the American struggle for modernity was a strong aversion to provincialism. . . . “ Not very interesting and certainly beside the point? However, he does warm up as he keeps going, and has several perceptive points to make:
“Certain of the abstract expressionists seem to have burst into paint with an already emergent personal force from the very first works we know---one things particularly of Motherwell and Barnett Newman. The variety from period to period in each of these artists encompasses a broadening of technical resources. . . and moves in a steadily rising power of emotional conviction. They have had a conviction if not a style, from the beginning, more ethical than visual, which has left them free to include anything useful and has fuided them away from the peripheral.” This is a very smart point, especially in regard to Motherwell, who appears to have (or have destroyed them if he did) no early clumsy, unknowledgeable works. “The Little Spanish Prison,” (1941-44) and “Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive” (1943) are both the stunning looking and assured works of a mature painter. “The Homely Protestant” (1948) looks bold and big though it is only 4feet by 8feet big. O'Hara, with a good head for a story, tells us that the title came from Motherwell's blindly pointing to a phrase in Finnegan's Wake. The chronology by Kynaston MacShine is fun to read for a list, but there is no mention of what happened to Mrs. Motherwell number one, only a short note for 1950 : “Marries Betty Little of Washington, D. C.” The next thing you know two daughers are born and in 1957 the note “Meets Helen Frankenthaler” and in 1958 Marries Helen Frankenthaler in the Spring. There are pictures of Frankenthaler with the Motherwell daughters in 1961-62 and “Motherwell with Helen Frankenthaler in front of their house in Provincetown. . . summer, 1962.” No note tells us about the fate of Betty Little, dead or divorced, Heathcliff. The black and white illustrations don't work all that well for the paintings, but there are some great pieces of ephemera (for instance, a poster for an exhibition at Sidney Janis Gallery, 1959 with MOTH/ERW/ELL on three lines like a poem). There is an amazing one page “Catalogue for 1948-49” for The Subje t of the Artists: a new art School,” with faculty noted: William Baziotes, David Hare, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko. Barnett Newman was to join later. Can you imagine this school? Amazing. One evening a week for a term is $45. Photographs are also of some note: “Artists' session at Studio 35, an informal panel discussion on modern art recorded stenographically and printed in part in Modern Artists in America.” The photograph shows a long table split in two, one half upside down, mirror like, with everyone who was anyone sitting around the table, nearly thirty artists, including Louise Bourgeois, Max Ernst, Richard Pousette-Dart, Barnett Newman, Ad Rheinhardt Bradley Tomlin, etc. Come to think of it, it is probably two different photographs as Pousette-Dart appears in both halves. The Selective bibliography compiled by Bernie Karpel of the Museum Library is thorough and fascinating in itself (for instance, listed are a complete listing of the “Documents of Modern Art” series that Motherwell edited for Wittenborn and a Portable Gallery Robert Motherwell! This is 42 color slides and an addition of 30 slides. What a resource, what a kick. Also listed as in the MOMA Library Collection are 50 negative stirps of Photographs of Motherwell in 1957-58 given to the Library by the photographer Hans Namuth (more famous for his Life Magazine pictures of Jackson Pollack).