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拍品专文
"The eye functions as the brain's sentry, I communicate my most private perceptions through art" - Arshile Gorky
With its blend of color, fluid line and swirling amorphous forms Virginia Landscape is one of Arshile Gorky's most significant works. It marks the breakthrough moment when, after several years of an almost monastic existence of painting and drawing in his New York studio, he rediscovered the inspiration that came from the natural surroundings and began to produce some of the most important works of his career.
Thanks to his contacts with the Surrealist movement Gorky had already begun to free himself from the vestiges of artistic convention but the real breakthrough came in 1943 with a trip he made to Virginia, shortly after the birth of his first child, Maro. Staying at Crooked Run Farm, the property owned by his parents-in-law, Gorky was intoxicated by his exposure to the countryside and to country living. He had visited Connecticut the previous year, but this second, much longer stay in the country, enhanced by his delight at becoming a father, transformed his art. The countryside immediately reminded Gorky of his childhood home in Armenia, a theme which had continually haunted his works, but which now came to the fore with a lyrical poignancy in the shimmering icons of Virginia Landscape. Throughout his artistic development, memory and nostalgia had remained central themes, however, on his initial exposure to the countryside in Connecticut, and then his immersion the following year in Virginia, Gorky managed to fuse his nostalgia with his interest in the automatism introduced to him by his friend, the surrealist artist Roberto Matta. Virginia Landscape is filled with glyph-like signs and symbols which hover on the brink of understanding, but remain ultimately mysterious.
When Gorky returned to New York, he showed the fruits of his Virginia trip to Dorothy Miller, the legendary and visionary curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who wrote of the encounter: "He came back with this huge portfolio full of those wonderful crayon-and-pencil drawings. And I was crazy about them. 'Now you must have one,' he offered. And I said, 'Oh no, Gorky. I'm sorry. I buy what I can but never accept a gift from an artist.' And it was a principle that we had here at the museum, unfortunately. So I said, 'No, I won't take one but I'll take three of them for an exhibition that we are going to send out on the road.' So that we did" (D. Miller, as quoted in H. Herrera, Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work, New York, 2003, p. 428).
With his landscapes Gorky wanted to immerse himself in nature and works such as Virginia Landscape are a physical manifestation of the sights, smells, and sounds that he experienced during his sojourns to the countryside. This almost spiritual reaction to what he saw became the most important aspect of his work. André Breton, the founder of the Surrealist movement, spotted this extraordinary quality in Gorky's work early on, "Arshile Gorky - for me is the first painter to whom the secret [of Surrealism] has been completely revealed!...In short it is my concern to emphasize that Gorky is, of all the surrealist artists, the only one who maintains direct contact with nature - sits down to paint before her" (A. Breton quoted in J. C. Lee,'Arshile Gorky: The Power of Drawing', Arshile Gorky: A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat. New York, 2003, p. 63).
This work is catalogued in the Arshile Gorky Foundation Archives as number D1022.
With its blend of color, fluid line and swirling amorphous forms Virginia Landscape is one of Arshile Gorky's most significant works. It marks the breakthrough moment when, after several years of an almost monastic existence of painting and drawing in his New York studio, he rediscovered the inspiration that came from the natural surroundings and began to produce some of the most important works of his career.
Thanks to his contacts with the Surrealist movement Gorky had already begun to free himself from the vestiges of artistic convention but the real breakthrough came in 1943 with a trip he made to Virginia, shortly after the birth of his first child, Maro. Staying at Crooked Run Farm, the property owned by his parents-in-law, Gorky was intoxicated by his exposure to the countryside and to country living. He had visited Connecticut the previous year, but this second, much longer stay in the country, enhanced by his delight at becoming a father, transformed his art. The countryside immediately reminded Gorky of his childhood home in Armenia, a theme which had continually haunted his works, but which now came to the fore with a lyrical poignancy in the shimmering icons of Virginia Landscape. Throughout his artistic development, memory and nostalgia had remained central themes, however, on his initial exposure to the countryside in Connecticut, and then his immersion the following year in Virginia, Gorky managed to fuse his nostalgia with his interest in the automatism introduced to him by his friend, the surrealist artist Roberto Matta. Virginia Landscape is filled with glyph-like signs and symbols which hover on the brink of understanding, but remain ultimately mysterious.
When Gorky returned to New York, he showed the fruits of his Virginia trip to Dorothy Miller, the legendary and visionary curator at the Museum of Modern Art, who wrote of the encounter: "He came back with this huge portfolio full of those wonderful crayon-and-pencil drawings. And I was crazy about them. 'Now you must have one,' he offered. And I said, 'Oh no, Gorky. I'm sorry. I buy what I can but never accept a gift from an artist.' And it was a principle that we had here at the museum, unfortunately. So I said, 'No, I won't take one but I'll take three of them for an exhibition that we are going to send out on the road.' So that we did" (D. Miller, as quoted in H. Herrera, Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work, New York, 2003, p. 428).
With his landscapes Gorky wanted to immerse himself in nature and works such as Virginia Landscape are a physical manifestation of the sights, smells, and sounds that he experienced during his sojourns to the countryside. This almost spiritual reaction to what he saw became the most important aspect of his work. André Breton, the founder of the Surrealist movement, spotted this extraordinary quality in Gorky's work early on, "Arshile Gorky - for me is the first painter to whom the secret [of Surrealism] has been completely revealed!...In short it is my concern to emphasize that Gorky is, of all the surrealist artists, the only one who maintains direct contact with nature - sits down to paint before her" (A. Breton quoted in J. C. Lee,'Arshile Gorky: The Power of Drawing', Arshile Gorky: A Paintings Retrospective, exh. cat. New York, 2003, p. 63).
This work is catalogued in the Arshile Gorky Foundation Archives as number D1022.