Books I'm reading: Robert Motherwell: Early Collages

I recently finished reading Robert Motherwell: Early Collages (The Salomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2013), the catalog accompanying a show of Motherwell's early work in collage at The Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice in 2013 and the Guggenheim Museum in New York in 2014. In addition to about 60 color plates, the book includes four essays on Motherwell's first experiences doing collage, an interest that he continued to pursue throughout his career. 

Among these essays, I found "Made of Paper: Motherwell's Materials in the 1940s" particularly interesting. It discusses the types of paper and other materials the artist used in the early works, the glue he typically used, and the backing materials he employed. I was a bit startled to learn that he used Duco Cement (which I remember from my childhood as a cheap, all-purpose hardware store glue), Lepage's Mucilage, and Lepage's Liquid Glue (inexpensive household glues I remember as well). Clearly, the idea of using archival materials was not well established at the time even among the artists that were starting to lead the world art scene. 

A number of the papers he used were colored with fugitive dyes. Bright purples and magentas, in particular, have faded in some of the work to light brown or a pinkish beige. The essay includes photos of some of the work as it looks now alongside digital recreations with the color restored to what it likely was when the work was new. The digital restorations were based on areas where the original color was protected from light exposure by overlapping collage elements. The fading was fairly rapid, it seems. Motherwell is quoted in the essay in later interviews and he seems to have accepted the changes without too much regret, but clearly the original, vibrant colors make for stronger compositions. Below is just one example.