Carolina Quotes[the process of painting..] ..is conceived of as an adventure, without preconceived ideas on the part of persons of intelligence, sensibility, and passion. Fidelity to what occurs between oneself and the canvas, no matter how unexpected, becomes central.. ..the major decisions in the process of painting are on the grounds of truth, not taste...
Robert Motherwell Connected to the Carolinas
Source
The School of New York, exhibition catalogue, Perls Gallery, 1951; as quoted in the New York School – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row Publishers, 1978, p. 46
- year
- 1951
- locator
- p. 46
Cite this record
“[the process of painting..] ..is conceived of as an adventur…” Robert Motherwell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-0C66744D86. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/0c66744d86
More from Robert Motherwell
Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have come in to existence, save as the consequence of a most profound, relentless, unquenchable need. The need is for felt experience - intense, immediate, direct, subtle, unified, warm, vivid, rhythmic.
A modern painter may have many audiences or one or none; he paints in relation to none of them, though he longs for the audience of other modern painters.
In my case, I find a blank canvas so beautiful that that to work immediately, in relation to how beautiful the canvas is as such, is inhibiting and, for me, demands 'too much to quickly'; so that my tendency is to get the canvas 'dirt', so to speak, in one way or another, and then, so to speak 'work in reverse', and try to bring it back to an equivalent of the original clarity and perfection of the canvas, that one began on...