Carolina QuotesIt would be very difficult to formulate a position in which there were no external relations. I cannot imagine any structure being defined as though it only has internal meaning.
Robert Motherwell Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Modern Artists in America, First Series, R. Motherwell, Ad Reinhardt and B. Karpel eds., 1952; as quoted in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983, p. 40
- year
- 1952
- locator
- p. 40
Cite this record
“It would be very difficult to formulate a position in which …” Robert Motherwell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-45B70F3677. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/45b70f3677
More from Robert Motherwell
Great art is never extreme. Criticism moves in a false direction, as does art, when it aspires to be a social science.. .In this world modern artists form a kind of spiritual underground.
Indeed, our society, which has seemed so freedom-giving and passive in its attitudes toward the artist really makes extraordinary demands upon him: on the one side, to be free in some vague spiritual sense, free to act only as an artist, and yet on the other side to be rigorously tested as to whether the freedom he has achieved is great enough to be more solidly dependable than a government's financial structure.. .No wonder that modern painters, in view of these curious relations to society, have taken art matters into their own hands, decides for themselves what art is, what its subjects are to be, and how they are to be treated. Art like love is an active process of growth and development.
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'.