Robert Motherwell

The New York School’s resident poet/philosopher, Robert Motherwell understood abstract art as a “form of mysticism,” a means by which the imagination might apprehend the unseen and universal. Motherwell never doubted that abstraction was the only valid mode for a painter in the modern world. When asked his approach to painting, the artist explained that: The game is not what things ‘look like.’ The game is organizing, as accurately and with as deep discrimination as one can, states of feeling; and states of feeling, when generalized, become questions of light, color, weight, solidity, airiness, lyricism, sombreness, heaviness, strength, whatever….”No one played the “game” with as much grace and intelligence as Motherwell.