Books I'm Reading: The Collected Works of Robert Motherwell

I've been on a reading spree lately – reading focused on New York in the 1950s, the abstract expressionists, and, in particular, the women that were associated with the New York School – that was my starting point at least. One book has led to another, most recently to The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell (Oxford University Press, 1992, edited by Stephanie Terenzio). It's been on a bookshelf in the living room for years. I don't recall when or where I purchased it. I saw it somewhere used and thought it might be interesting to read. I finally started it a couple of weeks ago as it suddenly seemed particularly appropriate to do so in the context of the other reading I'd been doing and I've just finished it. As it's a collection of shortish pieces, it's ideal for dipping into for short spells as time allows, but I found myself reading it for long stretches. 

This recent reading has been educational. Most of the artists I've been reading about have long been familiar to me and I've seen their work in person numerous times in museums all over the world, but I realize that, until now, I've known little about their personal lives, about who they associated with, about their views on making art or what they thought about the art of others. Motherwell, it turns out, was an erudite man who, over a long career, wrote quite a lot about making art and about the art of others. For the most part, he writes very clearly, although his use of a few terms took some getting used to (more about that below). The book includes writings from 1941 through 1988 (he died in 1991). It includes essays, contributions to exhibition catalogs, scripts for and transcripts of public talks, introductions to volumes that he was involved in publishing, miscellaneous notes, and letters. Each selection is introduced by editor Stephanie Terenzio to give context and these introductions are often detailed and as enlightening as the writings they precede.

I didn't know that Motherwell had been a philosophy student at Harvard before becoming a painter, that early in his career he associated closely with the surrealists that fled Europe in the lead-up to Word War II, that he was active as a teacher and an editor, or that he is such an excellent source of information and deep thought about the early years of the abstract expressionist movement (he came to be seen as the intellectual of the movement, although he doesn't appear to have liked that label). 

Throughout his writings he emphasizes how important the ideas of the surrealists were in the early days of abstract expressionism and focuses on the concept of "psychic automatism," which he sees as the seed from which abstract expressionism grew. In his famous manifesto of 1924, André Breton coined the word "surreal" (above real, or beyond real) and first articulated the idea of psychic automatism, if my understanding is correct. He defined surrealism in terms of psychic automatism, saying surrealism is "pure psychic automatism through which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, or in any other manner, the true functioning of thought," the idea here being that the surreal emerges directly from some pre-conscious realm and the idea of "action painting," a term that came to be used as a synonym for abstract expressionism, developed out of this kind of idea. Action painting emphasized the physical act of painting itself from which the art that emerged was understood to be primarily a record of the action. Jackson Pollack's drip paintings were the quintessential action paintings. Abstract expressionism developed ultimately in many directions, but, reading Motherwell, I've understood for the first time this early connection between surrealism and abstract expressionism. Motherwell notes, importantly, that surrealism itself was anti-abstract art. 

Another idea Motherwell repeatedly emphasizes is that modern art (he is speaking in the 1950s here) is international and historically inclusive. He says the modern artist stands apart from community and tries to connect directly to the universe in contrast with the traditional artist; traditionally, he says, the artist has been part of the community and expressed the values of the community from within. He says in one piece that modern art is universal, drawing on the entire history of art and that it seems radical (that is, it seemed radical at the time of its emergence) only because most people know only the tradition of realism handed down "from Greece and Rome and the Renaissance and modern modes of illustration." Much of his early writing is aimed at trying to help a baffled public understand what modern (= non-representational) painting was.  

Several terms, I must admit, I had a little trouble with. I lacked confidence at first (and to some extent still do) that I was precisely understanding his intended meanings. "Plastic" is one of these. As an adjective, "plastic" has always meant to me something close to "formable" or "malleable" (aside from the more obvious meanings "made of plastic" or, figuratively, "cheap.") By the time I had finished the book, I decided he was using it more or less to mean "creative" and I am somewhat relieved to see that the Oxford English Dictionary lists that as among the meanings of the word when used as an adjective – a usage that first appears in 1662 – although it was unfamiliar to me.  

Another of these is "feeling." Naturally, I know the word, but Motherwell uses it in a specific way, to mean "sensitivity" or "ability to feel" and he goes to some trouble in one of the selections collected in this volume to contrast it with "emotion" and to say the two are not synonymous, although they commonly are used interchangeably.  He says feeling is "the objective response to what externally is" (his training in philosophy is frequently evident in his writing), while "emotion" is something internal. His view is that most surrealist work is emotional as is the work of German expressionists like Ludwig Kirchner. He seems to think "felt work" is superior to "emotional work" while admitting at the same time that he loves the emotional work of Goya. 

In addition, his writing has adjusted my understanding of the word "abstract." I see now that when I have used it, I probably really meant "non-representational." He points out that "to abstract" means "to select" and that that implies referencing reality; an abstraction is a selection from and simplification of the real. If we say "non-representational" we can eliminate the idea of starting with an image (a mental image) of reality and arriving at a simplified form of that image that emphasizes its essence. A non-representational work bypasses the selection and simplification – the selective emphasizing of aspects of – a reality-based image. There's a great deal of confusion even among artists about the meaning of words. I imagine that's why visual artists are visual artists and not writers. 

In a nutshell, The Collected Writing of Robert Motherwell is a rich collection of primary source material related to the world of art in the US, particularly New York, between the 1940s and the 1980s and of thinking about art. There's really too much here to absorb in a single reading. This is a book I may have to re-read in a year or two. Before I do, however, I have several others to read on the subject of modern art – books I've become aware of through reading the present volume. The first of these is The Dada Painters and Poets, an anthology edited by Motherwell himself. Then there's The Imagery of the Surreal (by J. H. Matthews) and  Abstract Expressionist Painting in America (by William C. Seitz and Dore Ashton with contributions also from Motherwell). By the time I finish those, I'll probably need a break to try to digest it all.