Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 130
c184
c184
Gauloises with Pink
1967–ca. 1969
Acrylic and pasted papers on board
8¼ x 6½ in. (21 x 16.5 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper left, incised and inscribed:
RM 67
artist’s studio number
c67-1356
present owner
Collection of Corrado Rava
provenance
Carla Panicali; Corrado Rava
solo exhibitions
William Ehrlich Gallery, New York,
June 1979.
comments
This is the first collage in which
Motherwell refers to his use of packages from Gauloises cigarettes in the
title of the work. The pink paint may
have been added around 1969–70,
when Motherwell was at work on several small paintings in the Summertime
in Italy series (see p598–p603).
118
collages
Motherwell had begun using the
Gauloises packages in collages as early
as 1956, in Histoire d’un Peintre (c66)
and Yellow Envelope (c67). He continued that practice intermittently through
the late 1950s, in works such as The
Tearingness of Collaging (c69), Collage
(c70), Untitled (c73), and Memory of
St.-Jean-de-Luz (c87). Starting in
1967, when his friend and Provincetown
neighbor B. H. Friedman provided a
steady supply of Gauloises packages
(see the Comments for Untitled, c185),
Motherwell used them with increasing
frequency, and often referred to them
in his titles. Generally, Motherwell preferred the blue labels from the Gauloises
Caporal cigarettes to the white labels
from the Disque Bleu line, which he
used much less frequently; see Memory
of St.-Jean-de-Luz (c87).
Motherwell later associated his
awareness of the Gauloises packages as
a determining factor in his sympathy
for the collage medium itself: “I used to
reflect occasionally, why is it that I took
to collage like a duck to water and then
I remembered that I spent the year
c185
’38–’39 in Paris. I stayed with a French
family en pension and sometimes after
dinner we’d go to the Café des Deux
Magots. Picasso was very often at a
corner table surrounded by friends and
I realized soon that they were writers
and Picasso would scan the room looking at everybody, and while scanning
the room without looking at what was
in front of him—say the coffee cup and
saucer, his package of cigarettes, a piece
of silver or two, and a napkin—and he
would keep moving them, especially on
the surface of the table which had a
white table cloth, so that the Gauloises
Bleues showed vividly and I had never
seen a collage but at that moment there
was something about the way Picasso
left it that really moved my heart irrationally and one day it occurred to
me years later, of course I took to it
like a duck to water, I had watched the
inventor of collage make them at the
café table” (see Catherine Tatge, Robert
Motherwell and the New York School:
Storming the Citadel, 1991; see
Filmography).
c185
Untitled
1967
Acrylic, pasted papers, and ink on
board
8½ x 7 in. (21.6 x 17.8 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper right: RM 67
present owner
Collection of B. H. Friedman
provenance
B. H. Friedman, 1967
comments
This work may originally have been
meant as part of a Maritime Collage
series; see Maritime Collage No. 3
(c186). It was given to Motherwell’s
friend, the writer B. H. Friedman, who
in a 1967 letter thanked Motherwell for
a “very beautiful maritime collage”
(Dedalus Foundation Archives). But
there are no works called Maritime
Collage No. 1 or No. 2. Friedman, who
in 1967 purchased the house next to
Motherwell’s Provincetown home and
studio, smoked Gauloises cigarettes,
