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Modernisms 1900-1980
Course: Modernisms 1900-1980 > Unit 9
Lesson 1: Abstract Expressionism- Abstract Expressionism, an introduction
- Finding meaning in abstraction
- Norman Lewis, Untitled
- de Kooning, Woman I
- How to paint like Willem de Kooning
- How to paint like Willem de Kooning - Part 2
- Willem de Kooning, Woman, I (from MoMA)
- Barnett Newman
- Newman's Onement I, 1948
- The Painting Techniques of Barnett Newman
- Restoring Rothko
- Why is that important? Looking at Jackson Pollock
- Representation and abstraction: Millais's Ophelia and Newman's Vir Heroicus Sublimis
- The Case For Mark Rothko
- Rothko, No. 210/No. 211 (Orange)
- Mark Rothko's No. 3/No. 13
- The Painting Techniques of Mark Rothko
- The Painting Techniques of Jackson Pollock
- The Case for Jackson Pollock
- Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)
- Jackson Pollock, Mural
- Paint Application Studies of Jackson Pollock's Mural
- "One: Number 31, 1950" by Jackson Pollock, 1950 | MoMA Education
- Lee Krasner, Untitled
- Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 57
- Franz Kline
- The Painting Techniques of Franz Kline
- Hedda Sterne, Number 3—1957
- "Low Water” by Joan Mitchell
- Beauford Delaney's portrait of Marian Anderson
- Abstract Expressionism
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Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 57
Robert Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 57, 1957-60, oil on canvas, 84 x 109-1/8 inches (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art)
Speakers: Dr. Beth Harris and Dr. Steven Zucker. Created by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker.
Want to join the conversation?
- Seriously, isn't there more creativity shown by by the critics here, in an attempt to wring some meaning out of this, than was ever input by the artist?(11 votes)
- Why can't a critic say, "This is meaningless crap?" If EVERYTHING must have meaning, the very concept of meaning is destroyed. I am reminded of thecritics that have found "meaning", and gone gaga over abstract art created by pachyderms and primates.(10 votes)
- Is it just me or is the negative space of the forms much more interesting than the actual forms? They look like the letter C forward and backward, but in a clawlike form. Just me?...(4 votes)
- Thanks for pointing this out Valentina. I think in light of the comments by the art historians your perception adds greater menace to the brooding heaviness. The "c's" are like claws. More than the despair, I think there is a certain violence in this work. The heaviness of the black and oppression as previously stated.(3 votes)
- What is the "language" being used here? Language, according to Merriam Webster, as I believe it is meant here, is "a systematic means of communicating ideas or feelings by the use of conventionalized signs, sounds, gestures, or marks having understood meanings." I would like to know how this these forms constitute a language.
It is suggested atthat there is something about these shapes that suggested fascism or the Spanish Civil War. What was it, and how is it being communicated to his viewers other than the title? How can we judge whether he was successful? How are they any different from any other black shapes? 1:20
When I read this painting, I see arrogance and carelessness. I see a realization that Motherwell held such a privileged place in the art world from the connections that he was able to make at Stanford and Harvard that the need to communicate anything was put aside by his ability to push his own interpretation of his work.
I know several generally unsuccessful painters. If they were to paint some random shapes enclosed in black on a canvas, naming it Elegy to the Constitutional Republic of Iraq, what would be the grounds for keeping it out of MOMA? In essence, rather than saying what this painting is, how can we define what this painting is not?(3 votes)- I think the starkness of the image and its mystery shows that the artists were scared and thus reluctant to express their opinions openly because they feared the existing government. The lack of color reflected this fear because color represents feeling and mood.(1 vote)
- about 3/4 of the way through the video (the time thing wasn't registering), Dr. Zucker states that Motherwell was thinking of Picasso's Guernica when he painted the Elegy to the
Spanish Republic. How is that known? Did Motherwell write it, or say as much in an interview?(3 votes)
Video transcript
(lively music playing) Voiceover: We're at SFMOMA, and we're looking at a
large Robert Motherwell, "Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 57," and it was made in 1957, finished in 1960. Voiceover: And there are a whole lot of
Motherwells that look a lot like this and that are about the same subject, and it's a series that he did
that occupied most of his life. Voiceover: That's right. He made over 140 canvases. The very first one is very small. It was done on an 8-1/2×11
sheet of paper in ink. It was meant to illustrate a poem
written by his friend and colleague, Harold Rosenberg, the art critic. Rosenberg and Motherwell, this
is a decade earlier now in 1948, were co-editing an artist
magazine called "Possibilities." There was only one issue, however, and this never made it into
that ill-fated second issue. Voiceover: So these forms, these
hanging suspended oval forms, the horizontal rectangular shapes that
don't ever quite touch the bottom, the painterly quality around
the edges of the forms, it being hard to tell whether the white
paint is in front of the black paint or vice versa, these are things that we
see in this entire series. There is something about these shapes and the way that they were painted and the black and white that
suggested for Motherwell something about fascism and the
Spanish Republic and Franco. Voiceover: All issues relating
to the Spanish Civil War and the loss of democracy, this opening gambit of what
would become the violence of the Second World War. Motherwell was seeking
an abstract language that could embody his humanist feelings and his deep sense of loss
and mourning and elegy for the tragedies that
had taken place in Europe. Voiceover: And many artists were involved
in the Spanish Civil War, and writers. That's right. A lot of Americans and other
Europeans were deeply sympathetic to the democratic ideals of the Republic. Voiceover: And so it's hard to know
what these forms meant to him precisely, but it's not hard to feel a
brooding sense of entrapment when standing in front of the canvas. Voiceover: That paint can
also be emotionally direct is absolutely appropriate for
Motherwell's ideas at this time. Motherwell was a painter,
but he was also a critic and interested in
philosophy and literature. He is actually referencing
not only that original poem that this motif was intended
originally to illustrate, but then he quotes the
great Spanish poet Lorca in the first in this series, which is, "At Five in the Afternoon." Voiceover: That poem by Rosenberg
that this motif originally illustrated had a feeling of sadism. Voiceover: And suffering. Voiceover: And suffering. And so that becomes transferred to this
idea of looking at the Spanish Republic and the Spanish Civil War. Voiceover: It's hard to look at
this canvas, for me at least, and not feel the profound
loss and violence and Motherwell's need to find an idiom, a visual language that can
convey it that is solemn enough. Perhaps the figurative
tradition feels inadequate. Voiceover: And let's not forget,
at this moment in history, Franco is still ruling Spain. Fascism is still very much alive. Voiceover: When this is being painted, "Guernica" by Picasso, which
Motherwell was thinking about, that painting that is
blacks and whites and grays. Voiceover: And that expresses
the horrors of a specific moment in the Spanish Civil War. Voiceover: That's right. Remember, it was at MoMA because
Picasso wouldn't let it go back to Spain so long as Franco was in power. So these were still real issues. Voiceover: So speaking to that violence that had been so prevalent
for so long in Europe and trying to find a new
kind of pictorial language. Voiceover: This is an
artist that we associate with this great American school of
painting, Abstract Expressionism. But Motherwell reminds us that abstract
expressionism is tied to Europe and that its concerns
are not purely American. (lively piano music)