Motherwell Quotes

So it was that I gave about 1949 my 'Lecture on Nothing' at the Artists' Club on Eighth Street in New York City (started by Robert Motherwell), which predated the popular one associated with Philip Pavia, Bill de Kooning, et al. ). This 'Lecture on Nothing' was written in the same rhythmic structure I employed at the time in my musical compositions (Sonatas and Interludes, Three Dances, etc.). One of the structural divisions was the repetition, some fourteen times, of a single page in which occurred the refrain, 'If anyone is sleepy let him go to sleep.' Jeanne Reynal, I remember, stood up part way through, screamed, and then said, while I continued speaking, 'John, I dearly love you, but I can't bear another minute.' She then walked out. Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen. (John Cage)

Robert Motherwell: Would you say that a fair statement of your position is that the 'meaning' of a work of art consists of the relations among the elements, and not the elements themselves? Hofmann: Yes, that I would definitely say. You make a thin line and a thick line. It is the same with geometrical shapes. It is all relationship. Without all these relationships it is not possible to express higher art.

Hans Hofmann

Voyaging into the night, one knows exactly where, on a known vessel, an absolute harmony with the elements of the unreal. [1959, reacting on a remark of Robert Motherwell ].

Ad Reinhardt

I admired [c. 1952-54] his [ Motherwell's] painting. But the rest of the painters I was involved with --. I mean I didn't know [Clyfford] Still either and therefore Still didn't come up in my life as much. But I liked to look at Still. And I went of course to all of his [Robert Motherwell's] shows. But Bill de Kooning and Jackson [Pollock] were all around all the time. And it wasn't just following a career and a gallery and a social scene then, and a party scene, and the peripheral part of it at all. And I knew Bob [Motherwell] not personally at all.

Helen Frankenthaler

Here we are at the antipode of automatism [invention from Surrealism] and mechanism, and no less distant from the cunning way of reason. In the action of the machine, in which everything is repeated and predetermined, accident is an abrupt negation.. .. [the] excess of ink flowing capriciously in thin black rivulets.. ..this line deflected by a sudden jar, this drop of water diluting a contour – all these are the sudden invasion of the unexpected in a world where it has a right to its proper place. [Motherwell is quoting here the comments of w:Henri Focillon on Japanese legends of 'accidentalism'].

Robert Motherwell