“It?s not that the creative act and the critical act are simultaneous,” abstract expressionist Robert Motherwell once said. “It?s more like you blurt something out and then analyze it.”
Motherwell, who earned a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy from Stanford, studied painting and art history at Harvard and Columbia, was a prolific writer, public speaker and multimedia artist, and could analyze with the best of them.
More importantly, he was capable of gigantic, groundbreaking efforts on canvas. Both the 1965 “Elegy to the Spanish Republic CII,” a promised gift to the Baltimore Museum of Art?s permanent collection, and “Africa,” also a 1965 piece made specifically for the BMA, are as powerful and relevant today as the day they were created. “Elegy” is a reference to the Spanish Civil War, an event that inspired the artist?s well-known series.
Motherwell?s intellectual distinction initially would seem contradictory to his romantic works. But clearly he could listen to an intuitive artistic voice while infusing his work with historical and cultural perspective. The two central paintings in the main room of the BMA?s new exhibition highlighting Motherwell are not intricate, technical, highly detailed works, but rather stark, black, white and earthen visceral images.
They are intended to strike deep, somber chords in the human psyche.
The show, entitled “Robert Motherwells Meanings of Abstraction,” is accompanied with another exhibit, “Select Views: Drawings from the Benesch Collection,” and runs until July 30.
Motherwell (1915-91), a philosopher, political animal, music lover and mystic, attempted to cut a direct path to complex psychological and emotional ground. Like many of his Greenwich Village comrades in 1940s and 1950s, he saw abstraction as stripping bare the unnecessary aspects of painting to reach the essence of meaning.
Motherwell apparently did not have much faith in the general public seeking literal explanations for his outpourings. He even once said, “The public history of modern art is the story of conventional people not knowing what they are dealing with.”
Nonetheless, it is worth the effort.
More information
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New exhibits
» Robert Motherwell?s “The Meanings of Abstraction” runs from through July 30.
The one-gallery exhibition featuring Robert Motherwell?s painting “Elegy to the Spanish Republic CII” (1965), will be on view alongside more than a dozen works by the Abstract Expressionist artist and peers, including Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. “Elegy” is a large-scale painting that refers to the Spanish Civil War, an event that inspired the artist’s well-known series.
» At the same time, the BMA is featuring approximately 35 provocative works by some of the most influential names in contemporary art, including Jasper Johns, Ellsworth Kelly and Robert Rauschenberg, from the BMA?s Benesch Collection, encompassing 135 drawings that represent trends in contemporary art.
