Robert Motherwell's Elegies to the Spanish Republic

Was there a myth in the making?-A Structuralist Approach to Robert Motherwell's Elegies to the Spanish Republic Alice S. Brooker In 1948 Robert Motherwell created a small abstract to paint accordingly; rathe~ the intuitive, expressive expe drawing in black and white to illustrate a poem by Harold rience of painting became, for him, constantly interwoven Rosenberg. Motherwell had planned to publish this draw with a modifying intellectual strain.• ing in the second edition of Possibililies' (Figure I). When It was from the Surrealists' priociple of psychic autom the edition was not published, he put the drawing away and atism that Motherwell found his original inspiration for the forgot about it. Then, in 1949, Motherwell rediscovered the Spanish Elegies series. Like the Surrealists, Motherwell was piece while cleaning out a drawer. Now realizing that the fascinated with the concept of tapping into the subconscious; tension created by the reduced palette of black and white but for him, it was not merely to unearth such things as was echoed in the interplay between the sensuous ovals and Freudian symbols of repressed sexuality. Rathe~ as Jack D. thick, assertive rectangles, he reworked the original drawing Aam states in his 1983 publication on Motherwell, it was to into a small painting which he titled At Five in the discover•. .. a language that could adequately express com Afternoon. He took the new title from a line in a poem by plex physical and metaphysical realities.• , Federico Garcia Lorca2 (Figure 2). Following the SurrealiSts' methods, Motherwell used Although small in scale (15' x 20"), the new painting automatic "doodling" to create elementary forms which he was pivotal for Motherwell's artistic development. It I» later refined into the formal vocabulary of mammoth ovals came the germinal work for the theme and imagery of his and monolithic rectangles.8 These primary forms became, in best known series. the Elegies to the Spanish Republic. tum, what Aam defined as "the basis for the nonspecific Originally, he chose the title At Five in the Afternoon but highly charged iconography of the "Elegies"• (Figure 3). because it made reference to Lorca's poem about the vio When asked by Max Kozloff, during an interview in lent death of a Spanish bullfighter. As Motherwell con 1965, what "catalyst" or "agent" brought American Ab tinued to return to this imagery, he felt the need for a title straetionim from a state of imitation to that of mature that would carry similar connotations but would be more expression. he cited the "priociple of Surrealist Automa easily understood by a larger segment of society. Therefore, tism. "1• Yet Motherwell did not totally abandon himself to he renamed the series Elegies to 1he Spanish Republic.' In this concept, which is why Aam suggests that the painter discussing the title Motherwell states: was also influeoced by the vocabulary of geometric shape and limited color scheme found in the De Stijl group. 11 ... I take an elegy to be a funeral lamentation or Therefore, it seems that the shapes found in the Elegy series funeral song for something one cared about. The vacillate between Mondrian's cool, hard-<Xlgod designs and "Spanish Elegies" arc not "political" but my pri van Gogh's emotional. turbulent brushstrokes (Figure 4). vate insistence that a terrible death happened that This combination of rational and expressionist means of should not be forgotten.... But the pictures are representation is the corollary of Motherwell's continual also general metaphors of the contrast between endeavor to achieve a balance between intellect and intui life and death, and their interrelations.• tion, between structure and spontaneity. In fact, after he had created the basic forms for his first "Elegy" through Over the years Motherwell sustained an interest in the automatic drawing, he consciously revised them until he "Elegies" because, in his own words, •t felt that I had found instinctively sensed that he had abstracted the underlying an archetypal image. something that people who didnl framework which would adequately express the struggle know the tit.le or even like abstract painting were affected between life and death. by.•• What brought Motherwell to make such a claim? In In the Elegies to the Spanish Republic, Motherwell this paper the methodology and philosophical orientation communicated this conflict through polar opposites, the used in the creation of the Elegy Series will be examined to stark chromatic scheme being the most obvious. The ten try to determine if Motherwell did indeed produce a sort of dency of the black figures to dominate the canvas is held at modem-day archetypal structure. bay by the perfect balance of the white background. Thus, Robert Motherwell retains a rather unique position the "Elegies" are seldom referred to as "black" paintings, among modem artists. His eloquent articulation coupled but are perceived as a combination of forms created by with his rigorous academic training in philosophy thrust sharp contrasts. Likewise, the tension between the sensuous, him to the forefront of the Abstract Expressionist move undulating ovals and the static, angular verticals is never ment during the 1940s and '5-0s. Herc he assumed the role broken. Motherwell did not allow the opposing shapes to of an unofficial spokesperson. Studies under Meyer Shapiro overshadow one anothe~ just as he would not allow the and subsequent association with the exiled European artists white to bleed into the black. Bleeding might have softened residing in New York during World War II gave him a the edges or would have created substantial gray areas. As substantial historical foundation for his involvement in a result of the restrictions, the canvas has too much tension modem art. Such a background did not impel the artist to to be considered inert, but is also too stable to be consid fabricate an intellectual philosophy of art and then endeavor ered active. Like a dammed up stream, it evokes both 63 movement and pause simultaneously without compromis ... it is close to mindlessness, or to pure essence, ing either. with nothing between your beingness and the In 1944, four years after he had begun to paint pro external world. As though your beingness was fessionally, Motherwell spoke of the problems facing the being transmitted withoul intervention~ ... it is new generation of American artists. He stated that every more what you unconsciously know than what epoch has both "temporal" and "eternal" values and that it you think." is the mission of each artist to extract only those values that • ... persist in reality in any (time, in any place) . .. A blueprint of the mind's structure could not be dis like the confronting of death." 12 Motherwell argued that it covered through intellectual pursuit. If anything, mentally is not the "abstractness" of modern artwork that tends to searching for it prevented any trace of the "language" from alienate the artist from the rest of society, but this "rejec surfacing. As Levi-Strauss stated, " ... although the possi tion, almost in 1010, of the (temporal) values of the bour bility cannot be excluded that the speaker who created and geois."" In portraying "eternal" values, the true artist transmits myths may become aware of their structure and cannot afford to be blinded by the superficial and out mode of operation, this cannot occur as a normal thing, but moded components of his own environment, but must only partially and intermittently."19 Hence, Motherwell, in break free of them to experience the deeper conoems of the order to become a myth-painter of Levi-Strauss' definition, "spiritual" life in modern terms. It is only with fresh insight was once more confronted with two extremes: mental that Motherwell could develop an authentic visual vocabu awareness of a universal language of the mind, and the lary which would adequately express in universal terms the need to become oblivious to that awareness in order to personal tension he found in the confrontation of death. make use of the structure. Motherwell acknowledged his belief in the existence of Just as myths are often retold with only slight varia universal structures of communication that were, in his tions to the story, Motherwell repainted the composition of words, • .. found in the interaction of the body-mind and Elegy 10 the Spanish Republic over 160 times with only the external world."" This belief, which had caused him to slight alterations. The motivating factor behind his com use psychic automatism in his works, contains striking paral pulsion in reworking this iconography has been a subject lels to the concept of mythic structure introduced by the of frequent speculation by modem scholars. Motherwell's teachings of his contemporary, the noted sociologist Claude own explanation is outlined in a letter to his friend and Levi-Strauss. Both men were greatly influenced by Jungian biographer, Frank O'Hara: theory, especially the idea that archetypes are transferred by common racial experiences into the unconscious of the indi ... it is really an effort to find out what is the vidual. Levi-Strauss further taught that • ... the purpose of essence, what is magical, what is radiant in a myth is to provide a ... model capable of overcoming con theme, what is not. Because any work of an is tradictions."" That is, in myth polar opposites often exist very complex and if one feels that there is some side by side. Motherwell, in painting with both intuition and thing very good in it, it is at the same time often intellect, structure and spontaneity, as well by utilizing not so clear what it is that is good.JO opposing formal qualities and color schemes, brought these opposites together and thus fulfilled the function Levi uvi-Strauss saw the repetition of a single motif with Strauss assigned to myth.

Load more