Carolina QuotesNothing 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.
Robert Motherwell Connected to the Carolinas
Source
1951; as cited in 'Robert Motherwell, American Painter and Printmaker', on 'Artstory'
- year
- 1951
Cite this record
“Nothing as drastic an innovation as abstract art could have …” Robert Motherwell. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-FAB86B61F8. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/fab86b61f8
More from Robert Motherwell
I begin a painting with a series of mistakes. The painting comes out of the correction of mistakes by feeling. I begin with shapes and colors which are not related internally nor to the external world; I work without images. Ultimate unifications come about through modulations of the surface by innumerable trials and efforts. The final picture is the process arrested at the moment when what I was looking for flashes into view.
Among other ends, modern art is related to the ideal of Internationalism.
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.