Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Robert Motherwell
American; 20th-century
Chicago, IL: Smart Museum of Art
41%
Ile de France. 1952. Oil on masonite
The fucking toilet tones... those light fecal browns, that green stain bottom-right... all too squishy for Motherwell to have been able to get any kind of a handle on, structurally. He tried and failed, though, and the result is a painting about as overdetermined as a painting can be. The repetition of rectangles plus the unmoored little semiotic elements here and there (clover form, arrows) are compensation for how resistant these colors are to any order at all. (And not only resistant, but just plain awful to see — though one ought to get some credit for trying to layer hues of mustard on mustard.) The big black central band is like a schoolteacher, verge of tears, shouting at her classroom to settle down and clean up. I guess Motherwell's streaky application, in that black band and everywhere, is sort of like the painting crying about all the things it’s failing to do. (2025)