Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 22
Arca, Chiesa di San Marco, exh. cat.
2008, color illus. p. 143; Haxall 2009,
p. 24; Mattison et al. 2009, p. 54, color
illus. p. 54; Sandler 2009, pp. 22, 92.
comments
This collage uses the same kind of
German wrapping paper, though
with a slightly different pattern, that
Motherwell used in The Flute (c6)
and the same sort of wood veneer that
he used in The Displaced Table (c4)—
elements that he would use in a
number of other early collages. The
area around the left-hand figurative
form retains fragments of a yellowand-white-striped section of rice paper,
which had been laid down and then
torn off, and a number of small, reddish ovoid forms. The rough handling
of physical elements on the surface of
this collage is very much in keeping
with its violent subject matter.
Pancho Villa, Dead and Alive was
done in New York between October and
December 1943, following Motherwell’s
return from California after the death
of his father that August. The work
was inspired in part by a widely reproduced photograph of the bullet-riddled
corpse of the Mexican revolutionary
Pancho Villa (1878–1923). In a Museum
of Modern Art questionnaire that was
filled out in May 1945, Motherwell
replied to an inquiry about the subject
of the work and its possible “personal,
topical or symbolic significance” as
follows: “The picture represents Pancho
Villa dead, on the left, with bloodstains,
bullet holes etc.; + Pancho Villa alive,
on the right, with a Mexican ‘wall
paper’ behind him, + pink genitals. The
personal + topical + symbolic significance are evident to anyone who sees
it as I do; I have tried to ‘objectify’ (in
Santayana’s sense) these values: i.e.,
make a picture. If I were French, I
would have called it ‘Le Tombeau de
Pancho Villa,’ following a convention.”
Some twenty years later, in 1965,
Motherwell told Bryan Robertson
that it was not often observed that one
half of this work “is a figure inside a
coffin shape, covered with blood spots;
and the other half is a figure with a pink
penis hanging down—the penis being
alive. Two portraits of Pancho Villa, one
dead in the coffin, the other standing
there alive!” (See “Writings by the
Artist,” in the Bibliography.)
In a 1989 interview with Jack
Flam, Motherwell elaborated on how
10
collages
the collage was made and titled: “The
splotchy part on the right is actually a
German wrapping paper that I came
across in an art store. . . . it was literally
copies of brushstrokes. . . . and the
circles in a way seemed like heads and
I was making lines for formal reasons
and in the end I think the red splotches
on the left bled through from a piece of
oriental rice paper that I ultimately tore
off but obviously reminded me of blood
and. . . . the vertical lines on the right
struck me as a bit coffin shaped though
they probably weren’t done for that
reason but for plastic reasons. And in
the end one day—I always title pictures
afterward, I have lots of literary titles
but I’ve never started with one—and
looking at it one day it suddenly
occurred to me, what is it? It’s Pancho
Villa, dead and alive, and there was
also a book . . . that was filled with photos of the Mexican revolution and one
of them was of Pancho Villa assassinated in his Model-T Ford lying there
all bloody . . . so it’s a whole string of
associations and also problems of getting away from the Cubist collage”
(see “Writings by the Artist,” in the
Bibliography).
c8
Personage (Autoportrait)
Alternative Titles: Wounded Personage;
Personnage; Collage; Large Collage;
Surprise and Inspiration
1943
Oil, gouache, pasted papers, and ink
on paperboard
40⅛ x 25¼ in. (101.9 x 64.1 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, lower right: Robert Motherwell
1943
Verso: Robert Motherwell
9 December 1943
artist’s studio number
c43-5004
present owner
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice
(Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation,
New York)
provenance
Art of This Century, 1944; Peggy
Guggenheim Collection, Venice, 1976
solo exhibitions
Art of This Century, New York,
October 1944, cat. no. 13.
Arts Club of Chicago, 1946 (traveling),
cat. no. 10, as Surprise and Inspiration.
Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea,
Milan, 1989, cat. no. 2, color illus. p. 31.
Fundació Antoni Tàpies, Barcelona,
1996 (traveling), cat. no. 3, color illus.
p. 77, erroneously as Personnage
(Self-Portrait).
group exhibitions
Art of This Century, New York,
April 1944, cat. no. 13, as Personnage.
David Porter Gallery, Washington,
D.C., 1945 (traveling).
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
September 1946 (traveling), cat. no. 58,
illus. p. 35, as Large Collage; shown in
New York only.
Palazzo Centrale, Venice, 1948 (traveling), Venice, cat. no. 95; Florence,
cat. no. 101; Milan, cat. no. 102; as
Sorpresa ed ispirazione (Surprise and
Inspiration).
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 1951
(traveling), Brussels and Amsterdam,
cat. no. 116; Zurich, cat. no. 110; as
Surprise and Inspiration.
Palazzo del Parco, Bordighera, Italy,
1953, cat. no. 12, as Surprise and
Inspiration.
Tate Gallery, London, December 1964,
cat. no. 130, illus. p. 78, as Surprise
and Inspiration.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York, 1969, illus. p. 163, as Surprise
and Inspiration.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York, November 1982, cat. no. 57,
color illus. p. 63, as Surprise and
Inspiration.
Galleria dell’Accademia, Venice, 1985,
color illus. n.p., as Sorpresa ed ispirazione (Surprise and Inspiration).
Centre de la Vielle Charité, Marseille,
France, 1986, cat. no. 237, color illus.
p. 121.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York, 1998 (traveling), color illus.
p. 66.
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice,
2003 (removed mid-show), illus. p. 308
(fig. 138).
Foro Boario, Modena, Italy, 2004,
cat. no. 34, color illus. p. 123.
Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e
Contemporanea, Turin, Italy, 2007,
cat. no. VI.41, color illus. p. 229, erroneously as Character (Self Portrait).
references
J[ewell] 1944b, sec. 2, p. 7, as Personnage;
Paalen 1945, illus. p. 43, as Collage;
Celentano 1957, pp. 35, as Personage,
90, as Large Collage; Arnason 1966a,
p. 24, as Surprise and Inspiration;
Sandler 1970, p. 93, as Auto-Portrait;
Arnason 1977b, pp. 19–20, 50, illus.
n.p. (pl. 59), referred to in text and
in illus. as Surprise and Inspiration;
Motherwell in Arnason 1977b, n.p.;
Pleynet 1977, p. 189, as Surprise and
Inspiration; Lader 1981, pp. 242, 274;
Arnason 1982, pp. 19–20, 50, illus.
p. 104 (pl. 110), referred to in text
and in illus. as Surprise and Inspiration;
Mattison 1982, p. 10, as Wounded
Personage; Motherwell in Arnason 1982,
p. 104; Seitz 1983, illus. n.p. (fig. 154,
as Surprise and Inspiration); Mattison
1985b, pp. 62, 87, 102, 103, 108–9, 111,
118, 149–50, 208, 224, 237, illus. n.p.
(fig. 64), referred to in text and in illus.
as Surprise and Inspiration; Rudenstine
1985, pp. 583–86, 811, illus. p. 584
(cat. no. 128); Borges 1986, cover color
illus.; Pleynet 1986, p. 71, as Surprise
and Inspiration; Mattison 1987, pp. 42,
71, 80–82, 92, 94, 97, 125, 166–67, as
Autoportrait, 178, 196, 202, illus. p. 86
