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Lot Essay
Robert Motherwell's The Wedding was executed during an extremely fertile period of his career and the year of its execution marked a major personal milestone. According to the Robert Motherwell catalogue raisonne, Motherwell painted this work around the time of his marriage to the artist Helen Frankenthaler in April of 1958. The painting plays an important role in demonstrating his feelings for Frankenthaler as they tend to do within the canvases of this period. In a way, The Wedding is the marker of significance where his declaration of love evident in his series Je t'aime (which is not specifically addressed to Frankenthaler) is thus solidified into a union of two beings implied in The Wedding. Two large black edifices are placed in a field of ochre, and there is evidence of penti-menti between the two "figures," where two ovals were placed within a triangular form, a motif found in Je t'aime. The two forms, which Motherwell took pains to differentiate from each other, seem to swell and engulf the space around them, as one grand, assertive shape looms over the slimmer, more delicate form. At the center of the painting, the shapes touch at their contours and merge in a tender touch.
While the work exhibits the artist's signature use of ochre and black that conveys a primitive timelessness, it prefigures his first visit to Spain and the Lascaux caves in France as part of his honeymoon itinerary. For the artist the ideal "Mediterraean" state loomed very dominantly in his imagination, and preoccupation that was evident in his earliest work. From the late 1950s and onwards, there appears to be a greater freedom of expression an spontaenity, and the canvases grew larger in scale as a platform to this expressions. It is clear both husband and wife benefited from influences from each other, disparate as they may be. "At the same time that Frankenthaler's involvement with 'the more deliberative and theoretical Motherwell' lent her work greater density and opacity, it also heightened her awareness of how important it was for her to maintain her own impulsiveness. Similarly, while Motherwell gained from her an appreciation of how liberating and expressive transparent flows of paint could be, the looseness of her drawing and her freedom from distinguishing clearly between figure and ground made him aware of how important both linear precision and maintaining distinctions between figure and ground were to him." (J. Flam, et al., Robert Mothewell: A Catalogue Raisonne, 1941-1991, Paintings and Collages, Volume One, p. 94.)
The Wedding prefigures the Two Figures series which the artist has acknowledged the figures to be himself and Frankenthaler. There are various iterations of the two black figures suspended in space that have structure of Motherwell's earlier paintings, and yet, they possess the fresh rawness in the way the paint strokes are applied to the surface. There is an element of a lack of pretense and direct engagement with the materials at hand. The Wedding is absolutely instrumental in the critical evolution of Motherwell's painting from early to mature work.
While the work exhibits the artist's signature use of ochre and black that conveys a primitive timelessness, it prefigures his first visit to Spain and the Lascaux caves in France as part of his honeymoon itinerary. For the artist the ideal "Mediterraean" state loomed very dominantly in his imagination, and preoccupation that was evident in his earliest work. From the late 1950s and onwards, there appears to be a greater freedom of expression an spontaenity, and the canvases grew larger in scale as a platform to this expressions. It is clear both husband and wife benefited from influences from each other, disparate as they may be. "At the same time that Frankenthaler's involvement with 'the more deliberative and theoretical Motherwell' lent her work greater density and opacity, it also heightened her awareness of how important it was for her to maintain her own impulsiveness. Similarly, while Motherwell gained from her an appreciation of how liberating and expressive transparent flows of paint could be, the looseness of her drawing and her freedom from distinguishing clearly between figure and ground made him aware of how important both linear precision and maintaining distinctions between figure and ground were to him." (J. Flam, et al., Robert Mothewell: A Catalogue Raisonne, 1941-1991, Paintings and Collages, Volume One, p. 94.)
The Wedding prefigures the Two Figures series which the artist has acknowledged the figures to be himself and Frankenthaler. There are various iterations of the two black figures suspended in space that have structure of Motherwell's earlier paintings, and yet, they possess the fresh rawness in the way the paint strokes are applied to the surface. There is an element of a lack of pretense and direct engagement with the materials at hand. The Wedding is absolutely instrumental in the critical evolution of Motherwell's painting from early to mature work.