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Lot Essay
Open No. 103: Big Square Blue is an exceptionally elegant work from Robert Motherwell’s Open series, embodying the artist’s aim to create a pure visual unity through the combination of two distinct shapes. The genesis of these paintings is one that arose through happenstance, and then evolved into a deliberate and meditated expression that resulted in one of the most extensive bodies of work in the artist’s career. In the present example an open square delineated in graphite nestles against a powder blue backdrop. The composition feels both finite by virtue of the physical borders of the canvas, and yet at the same time infinite in its openness of composition and the depth of its feeling. It is this dichotomy that not only makes the work appear abstract, and true to the expressive origins of Motherwell’s oeuvre, but also deeply conceptual in its use of title, minimal forms, and bold application of a brilliant sky blue across the broad canvas. The origin of this series occurred in 1967, when the artist happened to lean a smaller painting against a larger one in his studio, and discovered that the relationship between these two proportions inspired a new concept of painterly unity. This ultimately launched a period of six years in which the Open paintings were Motherwell’s primary preoccupation, and led to significant critical and commercial acclaim.
At over six feet in height, Open No. 103: Big Square Blue brilliantly captures the quiet power and elegance of the best of the Open paintings. The canvas holds layers of carefully applied blue acrylic, and we can see the artist’s variations in his brushwork, oscillating between densely painted areas and smoother lightly painted ones. The effect of the layered paint, where texture comes from the application of paint rather than color, and the brilliant heavenly tone of the blue, lend the painting an expressionistic sensibility. At the same time, the simplicity of its composition is decidedly minimal. Superimposed on the blue background is the carefully applied rectangular shape made of contrasting charcoal in three clear lines, while the fourth is naturally implied by the painting’s top border. This rectangular shape is often interpreted as an architectural element, sometimes referred to as a window, and indeed inspiration from everyday structures and his immediate environment were core to Motherwell’s expressions. Whether it be windows, doors, or walls from places or paintings he had seen, or the natural delineations of land and sky, he drew inspiration from these patterns in his life and translated them onto the canvas. Yet, when it came time to define the completed work, Motherwell was very specific in his conviction that the whole canvas represented a single pictorial plane. In describing the effect of these compositions, he famously noted that “I refuse to distinguish the interior from the exterior, plastically, since the two entities are made of the same substance pictorially speaking” (R. Motherwell, quoted in J. Flam, et al., Motherwell: 100 Years, Milan, 2015, p. 200). This united whole ultimately characterizes the expressionistic sensibility of the series, as we see so brilliantly in Open No. 103: Big Square Blue.
Motherwell was also drawing from a painterly tradition of capturing apertures, and a sense of inner/outer dynamics present in early 20th century art history. A deeply cerebral artist, he was keenly aware of modes of visual exploration pursued by the generation of artists that came before him. He openly admired the work of Matisse, Picasso, and Mondrian, among others, and their sensitive and ground-breaking innovations. Indeed, Matisse’s work had a particularly profound impact on the Open paintings, and the investigations Motherwell pursued here can be tied to two specific examples of the older artist’s work that were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1966: French Window at Collioure and View of Notre Dame, both painted in 1914. The connection between Motherwell and Matisse is frequently cited in art historical texts, and art historian Jack Flam has drawn a direct line between the experience of these two Matisse works and Motherwell’s aesthetic ambitions in the Open paintings. The latter artist’s use of blue in Open No. 103: Big Square Blue only serves to accentuate this visual connection. “These are two of Matisse’s most abstract paintings, and they created quite a stir when they were first shown,” Flam said. “Because of their extreme reductiveness and the radical ways in which they treat the dichotomy between window and wall, they seemed much more daring that any of Matisse’s other work. For Motherwell, these two paintings marked a new engagement with Matisse, especially with regard to his own thinking about the formal tensions between window and wall, which he saw as truly unified” (J. Flam, ibid.).
A deeply thoughtful and erudite artist, Motherwell is known to have incorporated concepts from his earlier studies of philosophy, along with his aesthetic ideals from the history of painting. Jungian prototypes were of particular interest, and manifested themselves in the concepts of “wholeness, fluidity, freedom, and accessibility that had never been so completely articulated in his work” (R. Mattison, “Robert Motherwell’s Opens in Context”, in R. Mattison et. al., Robert Motherwell: Open, London, 2009, p. 10). By combining his innate appreciation of feeling, form, philosophy and artistic expressions of his predecessors, Motherwell created in Open No. 103: Big Square Blue and the seminal series of painting to which it belonged—a body of work that was wonderfully rich and continues to stand out as one of his most important contributions to art history.
At over six feet in height, Open No. 103: Big Square Blue brilliantly captures the quiet power and elegance of the best of the Open paintings. The canvas holds layers of carefully applied blue acrylic, and we can see the artist’s variations in his brushwork, oscillating between densely painted areas and smoother lightly painted ones. The effect of the layered paint, where texture comes from the application of paint rather than color, and the brilliant heavenly tone of the blue, lend the painting an expressionistic sensibility. At the same time, the simplicity of its composition is decidedly minimal. Superimposed on the blue background is the carefully applied rectangular shape made of contrasting charcoal in three clear lines, while the fourth is naturally implied by the painting’s top border. This rectangular shape is often interpreted as an architectural element, sometimes referred to as a window, and indeed inspiration from everyday structures and his immediate environment were core to Motherwell’s expressions. Whether it be windows, doors, or walls from places or paintings he had seen, or the natural delineations of land and sky, he drew inspiration from these patterns in his life and translated them onto the canvas. Yet, when it came time to define the completed work, Motherwell was very specific in his conviction that the whole canvas represented a single pictorial plane. In describing the effect of these compositions, he famously noted that “I refuse to distinguish the interior from the exterior, plastically, since the two entities are made of the same substance pictorially speaking” (R. Motherwell, quoted in J. Flam, et al., Motherwell: 100 Years, Milan, 2015, p. 200). This united whole ultimately characterizes the expressionistic sensibility of the series, as we see so brilliantly in Open No. 103: Big Square Blue.
Motherwell was also drawing from a painterly tradition of capturing apertures, and a sense of inner/outer dynamics present in early 20th century art history. A deeply cerebral artist, he was keenly aware of modes of visual exploration pursued by the generation of artists that came before him. He openly admired the work of Matisse, Picasso, and Mondrian, among others, and their sensitive and ground-breaking innovations. Indeed, Matisse’s work had a particularly profound impact on the Open paintings, and the investigations Motherwell pursued here can be tied to two specific examples of the older artist’s work that were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in 1966: French Window at Collioure and View of Notre Dame, both painted in 1914. The connection between Motherwell and Matisse is frequently cited in art historical texts, and art historian Jack Flam has drawn a direct line between the experience of these two Matisse works and Motherwell’s aesthetic ambitions in the Open paintings. The latter artist’s use of blue in Open No. 103: Big Square Blue only serves to accentuate this visual connection. “These are two of Matisse’s most abstract paintings, and they created quite a stir when they were first shown,” Flam said. “Because of their extreme reductiveness and the radical ways in which they treat the dichotomy between window and wall, they seemed much more daring that any of Matisse’s other work. For Motherwell, these two paintings marked a new engagement with Matisse, especially with regard to his own thinking about the formal tensions between window and wall, which he saw as truly unified” (J. Flam, ibid.).
A deeply thoughtful and erudite artist, Motherwell is known to have incorporated concepts from his earlier studies of philosophy, along with his aesthetic ideals from the history of painting. Jungian prototypes were of particular interest, and manifested themselves in the concepts of “wholeness, fluidity, freedom, and accessibility that had never been so completely articulated in his work” (R. Mattison, “Robert Motherwell’s Opens in Context”, in R. Mattison et. al., Robert Motherwell: Open, London, 2009, p. 10). By combining his innate appreciation of feeling, form, philosophy and artistic expressions of his predecessors, Motherwell created in Open No. 103: Big Square Blue and the seminal series of painting to which it belonged—a body of work that was wonderfully rich and continues to stand out as one of his most important contributions to art history.