Carolina Quotes..a plastic weapon with which to invent new forms.. [remark in 1951 on the concept of automatism ].
Robert Motherwell Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Abstract Expressionism, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 79
- year
- 1990
- locator
- p. 79
Cite this record
“..a plastic weapon with which to invent new forms.. [remark …” Robert Motherwell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-2E0D7C3C37. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/2e0d7c3c37
More from Robert Motherwell
The aesthetic is the sine qua none for art: if a work is not aesthetic, it is not art by definition.. .We feel through the senses, and everyone knows that the content of art is feeling; it is the creation of an object for sensing that is the artist's task; and it is the qualities of this object that constitute its felt content.
When I was young I was more obsessed with the materiality of things.. ..today I am more interested in air and atmosphere. This is why I deliberately treat space ambivalently. For example, an orange painting with white lines might be viewed as an orange wall with white lines, but the orange colour is no less atmospheric for all of that. It abounds white light, and the white line vibrate in a deep space, too, as well as an orange 'wall'.
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...