Robert Motherwell, Abstraction, and Philosophy

Robert Motherwell, Abstraction, and Philosophy

Author: Robert Hobbs

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-06-07

Total Pages: 124

ISBN-13: 0429560109

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this book breaks new ground by considering how Robert Motherwell’s abstract expressionist art is indebted to Alfred North Whitehead’s highly original process metaphysics. Motherwell first encountered Whitehead and his work as a philosophy graduate student at Harvard University, and he continued to espouse Whitehead’s processist theories as germane to his art throughout his life. This book examines how Whitehead’s process philosophy—inspired by quantum theory and focusing on the ongoing ingenuity of dynamic forces of energy rather than traditional views of inert substances—set the stage for Motherwell’s future art. This book will be of interest to scholars in twentieth-century modern art, philosophy of art and aesthetics, and art history.


The Writings of Robert Motherwell

The Writings of Robert Motherwell

Author: Robert Motherwell

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2007-05-10

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0520250486

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Robert Motherwell was not just a great painter, he was a brilliant thinker. As the founding editor of The Documents of Twentieth-Century of Art, he decisively shaped our understanding of modernism. This new and expanded selection of Motherwell's criticism provides an essential guide to the art of the high modern period, both American and European."—Pepe Karmel, author of Picasso and the Invention of Cubism "In the past two decades Abstract Expressionism has become one of the most dynamic subjects in art history; sometimes the reading is so dense it is like swimming through peanut butter. But, cutting through to the essential questions that generated the movement, the writings of Robert Motherwell are a treasure. Written at the same time he was painting, Motherwell's texts make me feel like a witness to the philosophical curiosity that generated one of the most powerful art movements of the twentieth century."—Michael Auping, author of Abstract Expressionism: The Critical Developments “This book is essential reading for anyone thinking about the uneasy clash of modernism and postmodernism in postwar America; Motherwell’s writing played a decisive role and this volume is an admirably full account of it.”—Jonathan Fineberg, author of When We Were Young: New Perspectives on the Art of the Child


Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell

Author: Susan Davidson

Publisher: Guggenheim Museum

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780892074976

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Catalog published on the occassion of the exhibition "Robert Motherwell: Early Collages" held at Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, May 26-September 8, 2013; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, September 27, 2013-January 5, 2014.


Form and Sense

Form and Sense

Author: Wolfgang Paalen

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2013-06-04

Total Pages: 112

ISBN-13: 1611459230

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Wolfgang Paalen was a central figure in internationalist surrealist circles in the late 1930s. Artist and intellectual, he was a European whose fascination with archaic cultures led him finally to Mexico, where he founded the influential magazine DYN in 1941. In the bold texts from DYN that make up Form and Sense, we encounter a unique artistic mind and an oracular voice. Paalen’s book is an intellectual delight with essays on cubism, surrealism, the universality of forms in architecture, and the relationships that exist between art and science. He weaves together the new ideas and archaic inspirations in twentieth-century painting and sculpture. His nuanced and original considerations of some key figures—Mondrian, Kandinsky, Picasso—marked Paalen in turn as a significant thinker in the world of modern art. This painter’s book, illustrated with carefully chosen examples of the art he examines, makes us not only understand but also experience the rich interplay between idea and image that informs the art of our own time. A new introduction by the scholar Martica Sawin examines Paalen’s career, particularly his influential writing on surrealism and abstraction.


Robert Motherwell

Robert Motherwell

Author:

Publisher: Dominique Levy Gallery

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781944379001

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Robert Motherwell (1915-91) came to abstraction not through painting, but through philosophy, poetry and art history. While studying at Stanford, he was introduced to modernism and symbolism; Mallarmé's dictum, "To paint, not the thing, but the effect it provides," would prove essential in Motherwell's work. Elegy to the Spanish Republic is perhaps the most literal example of this influence. Begun in 1948, the series, comprising some 150 canvases, was the artist's "funeral song for something once cared about" in abstract pictorial form. Exploring the inextricable links between poetry, politics, writing and painting revealed in the history of the series, this volume includes Harold Rosenberg's "A Bird for Every Bird," Federico García Lorca's "Llanto por Ignacio Sánchez Mejías," notes and writings by Motherwell on the Spanish Civil War, scholarly essays and rare archival material.