Robert Motherwell, Abstraction, and Philosophy

127 Pages·2020·1.024 MB·English

by  Robert Hobbs

Robert Motherwell, Abstraction,
and Philosophy
Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this book breaks new ground by
considering how Robert Motherwell’s abstract expressionist art is indebted to
Alfred North Whitehead’s highly original process metaphysics.
Motherwell first encountered Whitehead and his work as a philosophy
graduate student at Harvard University, and he continued to espouse
Whitehead’s processist theories as germane to his art throughout his life.
This book examines how Whitehead’s process philosophy—inspired by
quantum theory and focusing on the ongoing ingenuity of dynamic forces
of energy rather than traditional views of inert substances—set the stage for
Motherwell’s future art.
This book will be of interest to scholars in twentieth-century modern art,
philosophy of art and aesthetics, and art history.
Robert Hobbs has served as associate professor at Cornell University, USA,
and long-term visiting professor at Yale University, USA; he has also held
the Thalhimer Endowed Chair of American Art at Virginia Commonwealth
University, USA.
Routledge Focus on Art History and Visual Studies
1 Advancing a Different Modernism
SA Mansbach
2 Contemporary Sculpture and the Critique of Display Cultures
Tainted Goods
Daniel Adler
3 Duchamp, Aesthetics, and Capitalism
Julian Jason Haladyn
4 Post-Conflict Monuments in Bosnia and Herzegovina
Unfinished Histories
Uroš Čvoro
5 Robert Motherwell, Abstraction, and Philosophy
Robert Hobbs
Robert Motherwell, Abstraction,
and Philosophy
Robert Hobbs
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Robert Hobbs
The right of Robert Hobbs to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested
ISBN: 978-0-367-21044-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-26508-2 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
This book is gratefully dedicated to
Renate Ponsold Motherwell

Contents
Acknowledgments viii
1 Introduction 1
2 Robert Motherwell, Harvard, and Alfred North Whitehead 14
3 Motherwell’s Whitehead: The Felt Quality of Reality 38
4 Surrealism’s Psychic Automatism, Motherwell’s Plastic
Automatism, and Whitehead’s Process 48
5 Motherwell’s Collage Aesthetic 67
6 Whitehead’s Process and Susanne K. Langer’s Symbol 76
7 Conclusion: Material Means, Immaterial Results 85
Appendix A: Metaphors as Whiteheadian Prehensive Tools 91
Appendix B: Mallarmé’s Materiality and Althusser’s
Aboutness 97
Appendix C: Dore Ashton: The Arabesque 105
Index 109
Acknowledgments
As a graduate student researching Robert Motherwell’s personal archives in
Greenwich, CT, I first met this artist on October 24, 1974, the day he returned
home after five heart operations. At the time I was investigating his magiste-
rial series of Elegies to the Spanish Republic for my dissertation. Because of
his grave situation, Motherwell focused on the one person he believed to have
been crucial for his development as an abstract artist. “My work is profoundly
indebted to Alfred North Whitehead,” he said, before conceding, “Perhaps he
is too difficult for anyone to figure out the connections.” My initial response
was to pursue this extraordinarily generous insight, but my already approved
dissertation topic, with Donald Kuspit as its able director, took me in a dif-
ferent direction. Over the years, as I have researched a range of modern and
postmodern topics, I have continued to reflect on Motherwell’s remarkably
candid disclosure. Several years ago, I decided to pursue his revelation by
examining his graduate student days in Harvard’s philosophy department,
including his early contacts with Whitehead, to ascertain the overall impact
this process philosopher’s work had on Motherwell’s art.
Because I am neither a specialist in process theory nor a philosopher,
I contacted the respected Center for Process Studies at Claremont School
of Theology requesting the recommendation of a philosopher well versed
in Whitehead’s views on art, who would be willing to critique my com-
pleted manuscript. The Center contacted on my behalf Dr. George Allan,
Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Dickinson College and author of Modes
of Learning: Whitehead’s Metaphysics and the Stages of Education (State
University of New York Press, 2013). Professor Allan graciously agreed to
read my essay, and he provided several worthwhile suggestions while approv-
ing my use of Whitehead’s ideas.
Since the 1970s I have been fortunate in being able to expand on my ini-
tial research on Motherwell’s art in exhibitions and essays, beginning with
co-curating in 1975 Subjects of the Artists: New York Painting 1941–1947
Acknowledgments ix
for the Downtown Branch of the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1975
and coauthoring in 1977 with Barbara Cavaliere the essay “Against a Newer
Laocoon” for Arts Magazine. This essay, which has subsequently been used
as a text in undergraduate and graduate courses, underscores substantial dif-
ferences between critic Clement Greenberg’s formalist approach to abstract
expressionism and the artists’ statements about meaningful content inhering
in their abstract forms. In 1976 I wrote essays on Motherwell’s Elegies and
Open series for his first European retrospective, which was curated by Jürgen
Harten for the Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf; and in 1978 I co-curated
with Gail Levin Abstract Expressionism: The Formative Years, which opened
at Cornell University’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art before being shown
at the Whitney. Our coauthored catalogue was later republished by Cornell
University Press. My essay “Early Abstract Expressionism and Surrealism”
was published by the US College Art Association’s Art Journal in 1985;
“The Victorian Unconscious: Tonalist Sources for Abstract Expressionism”
was included in Paul Schimmel’s 1986 exhibition catalogue The Interpretive
Link: Abstract Surrealism into Abstract Expressionism; “Motherwell’s Opens:
Heidegger, Mallarmé, and Zen” became part of the 2009 multiauthored Robert
Motherwell: Open, which was published by London 21 Publishing Ltd., and
my essay “Krasner, Mitchell, and Frankenthaler: Nature as Metonym” was
included in Joan Marter, ed., Women of Abstract Expressionism, published by
the Denver Art Museum in association with Yale University Press in 2016. In
addition, I have presented papers pertaining to Motherwell’s art and thought
at annual US College Art Association meetings and have participated in a
number of museum symposia on abstract expression. These publications,
papers, and talks have served as excellent opportunities to share my ideas
while obtaining worthwhile feedback from other scholars; thus, they form a
meaningful background for my present study.
In addition to my involvement with Motherwell’s art, I have undertaken
sustained investigations of two other abstract expressionists and their art. My
work on Lee Krasner resulted in two different monographs (1993 and 1999)
and one retrospective (1999). My exploration of Richard Pousette-Dart’s art
was undertaken in conjunction with the very pleasant task of co-curating with
Joanne Kuebler the artist’s first retrospective (1990) and contributing to its
complementary monograph, in addition to curating a gallery exhibition for
Knoedler and Company in New York City (2008) and writing the accompa-
nying catalogue. As one of my esteemed professors Joseph Sloane was fond
of saying, “A person who knows only one artist’s work does not really know
that artist at all,” as his way of emphasizing the crucial need for comparisons
between members of the same and different generations are crucial if one is
to make informed historical judgments. And so, I would like to think that my