Page 21 - Studio International - March 1966

Top when constrained by the discipline of a point of view softening, in some ways, of the severity underlying the
Dublin 1916, with Black and Tan
1964 that is not, instinctively, his own. series as a whole. So majestic, tough and pure. The
Acrylic and oil on canvas Motherwell's real passion seems always to be for dangers of grandeur turning into grandiosity — this
84 1/8 x 204 1/2 in.
order, clarity, balance, equilibrium (equanimity), im- could indicate a decline in the black and white series.
Bottom patience with irrelevances or subterfuge and so on. 8 'Americans are like Spaniards, they are abstract and
In green and ultramarine 1963-65
Oil on canvas His gift is primarily classical, but it is continually dis- cruel. They are not brutal, they are cruel. They have no
88 x 248 in. rupted—animated ?—by unclassical intrusions. Graffiti close contact with the earth such as most Europeans
Collection: The Artist
By courtesy of Marlborough Gerson on a Mondrian. Why not? From Spanish prison to have. Their materialism is not the materialism of exist-
Gallery, New York Je t'aime. ence, of possession, it is the materialism of action and
7 The Spanish elegies—when does a mark become a abstraction.' Stein again, prophetic as always.
sign ; and when does a sign turn into a symbol ; and 9 The strong urge always to describe, by the very act
when does a symbol achieve universality as opposed of placement—nothing wrong with it, but Motherwell
to a self-indulgent, obsessive trade-mark or personal seems to be striving after something else, some kind of
insignia? Unquestionably his best works, the Elegies, liberation. An impatience with what has already been
but they are becoming over-strained. done, among other factors. Whistler's wry comment:
The new Irish elegy should rest for a long while as 'Art is eternal and, beginning there, cannot progress.'
a culminating point, a shift—and an atmospheric Motherwell doesn't want to progress, in the sense of a
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