Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 26
artist’s studio number
c44/47-5003
present owner
The Cleveland Museum of Art.
Contemporary Collection of the
Cleveland Museum of Art, 1961.229
provenance
Cleveland Museum of Art, 1961
solo exhibitions
Art of This Century, New York,
October 1944, cat. no. 1, as Mallarme’s
Dream (?).
Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin
College, Ohio, 1952, cat. no. 10.
Smith College Museum of Art,
Northampton, Mass., 1963, cat. no. 2,
illus. n.p.
New Gallery, Charles Hayden Memorial
Library, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, 1963.
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Robert Motherwell, September 1965
(traveling), New York, cat. no. 12,
illus. p. 13; Amsterdam, cat. no. 12,
illus. n.p.; Essen, cat. no. 14; Turin,
cat. no. 14, color illus. p. 73 (pl. 13).
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston,
November 1972 (traveling), cat. no. 7,
color illus. p. 19 (pl. 4), illus. p. 55.
Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City,
1975, cat. no. 2, color illus. n.p.
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo,
1983 (traveling), cat. no. 13, color illus.
p. 28.
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum,
New York, 1984, cat. no. 8.
group exhibitions
University Gallery, University of
Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1951,
cat. no. 49, illus. n.p.
Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston,
1954, cat. no. 33.
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New
York, 1969, cat. no. 254, color illus.
p. 93.
Minneapolis Institute of Arts,
September 1976 (traveling), color illus.
p. 352 (fig. 309).
Cleveland Museum of Art, 1979,
cat. no. 90, color illus. n.p. (pl. 30),
illus. p. 150.
Cleveland Museum of Art, 1987,
cat. no. 43, illus. p. 133.
Sprengel Museum, Hannover,
Germany, 2000 (traveling), cat. no. 299,
color illus. p. 67.
14
collages
references
Stroup 1944, p. 16, as Mallarmé’s
Dream (?); Holmes 1954, p. 3; Seitz
1955, p. 61, illus. n.p. (fig. 141); Henning
1962, pp. 50–51, 53, illus. p. 50 (fig. 2),
back cover color illus.; Motherwell in
Smith College Museum of Art exh. cat.
1963, n.p.; Weller 1963, p. 290, illus.
p. 290; B[erkson] 1965, p. 42; Carver
1965, p. 6; Charmet 1965, p. 168;
Claus 1965, p. 3; Edgar 1965, illus. p. 39
(fig. 3, erroneously as Beige and Black);
Hudson 1965, sec. G, p. 7; O’Hara
1965b, p. 264; Arnason 1966a, p. 34,
illus. p. 26 (fig. 11); Arnason 1966b,
p. 31; Bernardi 1966, p. 5; Cleveland
Museum of Art exh. cat. 1966, illus.
n.p.; Dunlop 1966; Melville 1966,
p. 478; Robertson 1966a, p. 89; Moore
1968, illus. p. 80; Wescher 1968, p. 301;
Kramer 1969c, illus. sec. Magazine,
p. 99; Courthion 1970, color illus. p. 17;
Henning 1970, illus. p. 21; Sandler
1970, p. 203, illus. p. 202 (fig. 16-1);
Freed 1972a, p. 8; Kelder 1972, p. 100;
Motherwell in Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston, exh. cat. 1972, p. 54; Museum
of Fine Arts, Houston, Bulletin 1972,
p. 89; Britannica Encyclopedia of
American Art 1973, p. 382; Patton
1973, p. 2; Volboudt 1973b, p. 85;
Acha 1975, p. 81; Baker-Carr 1975,
color illus. p. 35; Hobbs 1975b, p. 190;
O’Hara 1975, p. 70; Arnason 1976,
p. 56; Stebbins 1976, p. 348, color
illus. p. 352 (fig. 309); Arnason 1977b,
pp. 21–22, 24, illus. n.p. (pl. 72);
Motherwell in Arnason 1977b, n.p.;
Bonet 1978, p. 6; Ashton 1980, p. 4,
as Mallarmé’s Dream; Anderson 1981,
p. 158; Lader 1981, p. 273, as Mallarmé’s
Dream; Arnason 1982, pp. 9, 21–22, 24,
color illus. p. 112 (pl. 123); Motherwell
in Arnason 1982, p. 112; AlbrightKnox Art Gallery Calendar 1983, p. 3;
Ashton 1983, p. 43, color illus. p. 28;
Bonet 1983, p. 135; O’Hara 1983,
p. 177; Seitz 1983, p. 22, color illus.
n.p. (fig. 153); Van Hook 1983, pp. 102,
104–6, illus. p. 102 (fig. 1); Baitz 1984,
sec. Reader’s Guide, p. 15; Duffy 1984,
pp. 61, 93; Richard 1984, sec. D, p. 13;
Shere 1984, sec. Calendar, p. 4; Cooke
1985, p. 193; Digby and Digby 1985,
p. 175; Garcia-Herraiz 1985, p. 135;
Kimball 1985, pp. 33, 40; Landau 1985,
p. 311, illus. p. 311 (fig. 4); Mattison
1985b, pp. 80, 122, 136–44, 149, 167,
232, 239, illus. n.p. (fig. 101); Amepnka
1986, color illus. p. 48; Ashton 1987,
p. 269, as Mallarmé’s Dream; Mattison
1987, pp. 68, 98, 113–16, 142, 199, 203,
illus. p. 118 (fig. 42); Rodari 1988,
p. 132, color illus. p. 130; Ashton 1989,
illus. p. 9; Mackie 1989, illus. n.p.;
Pleynet 1989b, pp. 24, 70, color illus.
p. 71; Zanetti 1990, p. 91; Flam 1991,
p. 20, color illus. n.p. (pl. 8); Kramer
1991d, p. 33; Pleynet 1991, p. 15;
Motherwell 1992, p. 230; Terenzio
1992b, color illus. n.p.; Waldman 1992,
pp. 217–18, color illus. p. 218 (pl. 287);
Falgàs 1995, pp. 19, 49; Caws 1996b,
pp. 7, 9, 29, 127–28, 149, cover color
illus., illus. p. 10; Ràfols-Casamada
1996, p. 20; Anfam 1997, p. 504; del
Conde 1997, pp. 80–81, 103; Museum
of Contemporary Art exh. cat. 1997,
illus. n.p. (fig. 9); Chalumeau 1998,
color illus. p. 17 (pl. 10); Gilbert 1998,
pp. 94, 264–65, 268–70, 274, 277, 279,
368–79, illus. p. 535 (fig. 20); Pleynet
1998, p. 90; Wentrup 2001, pp. 34,
54–55, illus. (fig. 3); Anfam 2002,
p. 114; Caws 2003, pp. 99, 101, 120,
color illus. p. 99 (ill. 67); Engberg and
Banach 2003, p. 42, illus. p. 43 (fig. 11);
Quast 2003, pp. 317–26, illus. p. 319
(fig. 2); Museum Morsbroich exh. cat.
2004, color illus. p. 17; Caws 2006,
p. 117, as Mallarme’s Dream, illus.
p. 119, erroneously as Mallarmé’s Swan
no. 2; Haxall 2009, p. 24; Mattison
et al. 2009, pp. 52, 85, color illus. p. 53.
comments
The pale, pinkish papers in this collage
were once a vivid magenta, but have
faded (see Untitled, c2, for their original
color). The verso contains another,
unfinished collage composed of vertical
blue and brown rectilinear forms and
a vertical sheet of white paper painted
with splashed red biomorphic forms
similar to those in the horizontal rectangle of the recto composition (see figure
on p. 12). Three other collages from this
period are known to have works on their
versos in various states of completion:
The Sun (c15), Collage in Beige and
Black (c16), and Collage (c43).
This work was not shown or
published with its present title until
1952. According to Motherwell, he had
originally titled the work Mallarmé’s
Dream: “This work was first titled
Mallarmé’s Dream. Joseph Cornell, with
whom I shared in those days a lonely
preoccupation among American painters with French Symbolism, misremembered the title as Mallarmé’s Swan,
which along with white or blankness
was the symbol for Mallarmé of purity.
I preferred Cornell’s misremembrance,
and the picture has been so named ever
since” (Motherwell in Arnason 1982,
p. 112). (Cornell remembered this
rather differently and thought that the
work in question was one of his own
works that he had called Mallarmé’s
Swann [sic], adding, “Bob didn’t like
my title. So I changed the name. It’s
now in Cleveland”; see Dortch 1994,
p. 97. But there is no work by Cornell
in the Cleveland Museum of Art with
that name or from that time period.)
In fact, Motherwell did show a
work called Mallarmé’s Dream at his first
solo exhibition at Art of This Century,
in October 1944. But that work was
listed as an oil painting, and dated
1942–44. In a letter to L. Bailey Van
Hook dated April 16, 1981, Motherwell
wrote that there was “a very high
degree of probability” that “there was
also an oil called Mallarme’s Dream,”
and added, “Throughout my painting
career I have used the same title again
and again, totally unaware at the time
that I had used it before, just as in
certain details of my work I arrived at
some solution or other that I discover
at some later point I had arrived at—
sometimes years before—without being
aware of it at the time” (see “Writings
by the Artist,” in the Bibliography).
There does not seem to be a painting
under the collage; but it is possible that
the work on the verso is the one that
was titled Mallarmé’s Dream.
As Van Hook has noted (Van Hook
1983), the imagery of this collage appears
to be a visual equivalent of Motherwell’s
verbal evocation of Mallarmé in his
1951 essay “What Abstract Art Means
to Me”: “Sometimes I have an imaginary picture in mind of the poet
Mallarmé in his study late at night—
changing, blotting, transforming each
word and its relations with such care—
and I think that the sustained energy
for that travail must have come from
the secret knowledge that each word
was a link in the chain that he was
forging to bind himself to the universe”
(reprinted in Motherwell 2007, p. 159).
Although Frank O’Hara stated
that “the title is from a poem by Paul
Eluard” (Museum of Modern Art,
Robert Motherwell, exh. cat. September
1965, p. 13), a more likely source is
Mallarmé’s celebrated sonnet “Le
Vierge, le vivace et le bel aujourd’hui”
(The Virgin, Vivid and Lovely Today),
