Carolina QuotesWhen I first saw the work of Matisse I knew that was for me.
Robert Motherwell Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Conversation with W.C. Seitz, in Abstract Expressionist Painting in America, W.C, Seitz, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1983
- work
- after 1970
- year
- 1970
Cite this record
“When I first saw the work of Matisse I knew that was for me.” Robert Motherwell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-45C6EFEDBD. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/45c6efedbd
More from Robert Motherwell
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.
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']
All my life I've been working on the work - every canvas a sentence or paragraph of it. Each picture is only an approximation of what you want. That's the beauty of being an artist; you can never make the absolute statement, but the desire to do so as an approximation keeps you going.