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Portfolios%3D%222293%22%20and%20Sort_Artist%3D%22Motherwell,%20Robert%22
Painting
Night Music Opus #21
Robert Motherwell, (Aberdeen, WA, 1915 - 1991, Provincetown, MA)
Motherwell, Robert
United States
1915 - 1991
Male
32 1/2 x 25 1/2 in. (82.6 x 64.8 cm)
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overall
frame
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overall
Acrylic
Acrylic
1989
1989
1989
collage
Painting
Collages hang on refrigerator doors and the walls of museums. Tearing and cutting paper, positioning and repositioning the pieces, and layering them on top of each other until they create a satisfying composition—these are practices that preschoolers and the most sophisticated artists share.
Artist Robert Motherwell worked in collage in preparation for some of his larger paintings, and he also created collages that were finished works of art themselves, such as his Night Music series. About the colors, one writer described “the ochre and the black of ancient cave paintings, charred by fire, darkened by age; and there are earth colors, of clay and soil. And there are the lighter, fragile eggshell colors of day. These are all offered up, in the bands and layers of their forms, whether perfect in their angles, or incomplete, ragged.”
[Label text from It Came From the Vault exhibition, 2013]
Much of the art of the twentieth century challenges the viewer to leave the comfort of recognizable subject matter and confront more directly color, form and expressive technique. As an example, this collage by Robert Motherwell is representative of his nearly lifelong effort to expand the conventional boundaries of painting. Motherwell, who gave voice to the aesthetics and philosophies of the New York City -based Abstract Expressionists, created works imbued with tension and paradox. For him and his fellow painters (among them Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko), the canvas presented a surface on which to record gesture and emotion, liberated from the need to record an objective reality.
[Gallery label text]
upper right
Estate of Robert Motherwell
2001.3
item
Memorial Art Gallery
4/9/2001
2001.3SL1
slide
full
2 x 2
00/00/00
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Graphics/blank.gif
glossy
8 x 10
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http://127.0.0.1:5000/Graphics/blank.gif
negative
4 x 5
00/00/00
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Graphics/blank.gif
2001.3DI1
digital image
full
2 x 2
00/00/00
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Media/images/2001.3_A1.jpg
Print
Untitled
Robert Motherwell, (Aberdeen, WA, 1915 - 1991, Provincetown, MA)
Motherwell, Robert
United States
1915 - 1991
Male
24 x 20 in. (61 x 50.8 cm)
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sheet
Printer's ink
Printer's ink
1964
1964
1964
1900-2000, 20th century, serigraphs
Print
Estate of Robert Motherwell
1975.335.5
item
Memorial Art Gallery
9/8/1999
negative
4x5
00/00/00
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Graphics/blank.gif
glossy
8x10
00/00/00
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Graphics/blank.gif
glossy
8x10
00/00/00
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Graphics/blank.gif
negative
4x5
00/00/00
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Graphics/blank.gif
negative
4x5
00/00/00
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Graphics/blank.gif
glossy
8x10
00/00/00
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Graphics/blank.gif
75.335.5DI1
digital image
7/22/2004
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Media/images/75.335.5_A1.jpg
75.335.5DI#2
digital image
11/28/2012
http://127.0.0.1:5000/Media/images/75.335.5_A2.jpg