Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 331
c687
c688
c687
Montclair Art Museum, N.J., 1988.
c688
White Music
Montclair Art Museum, N.J., 2000.
The Barbarians Are Coming
1983
Acrylic and pasted papers on canvas
mounted on board
72 x 36 in. (182.9 x 91.4 cm)
comments
The title of this collage refers to the
piece of sheet music near the center,
which is from the manuscript score of
an unidentified late baroque or early
classical Stabat Mater. Motherwell
would use parts of this musical manuscript in a number of other collages
(see for example c690 and c728–c732).
This collage was the first and only
unnumbered work with the title White
Music. Motherwell did a numbered
series of collages with the same title in
1985 (see c728–c732).
Alternative Title: Tipped Red Square
1975/1984
Acrylic, pasted canvas, pasted papers,
and china marker on canvas mounted
on board
72 x 36 in. (182.9 x 91.4 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper right: Motherwell 83
Verso: “White Music” R. Motherwell
Summer, 1983
artist’s studio number
c83-2863
present owner
Private collection
provenance
Montclair Art Museum, N.J., 1987;
[Christie’s, New York, May 14, 2009,
lot 229, illus.]; private collection, 2009
inscriptions
Recto, upper right: R. Motherwell
May 75
artist’s studio number
c75-995; c75/83-3017; c84-3017
present owner
Private collection
provenance
Private collection, 1984
solo exhibitions
Montclair Art Museum, N.J., 1989,
erroneously as White Music IV.
solo exhibitions
Gertrude Kasle Gallery, Detroit, 1975,
cat. no. 10 (shown in early state), as
Tipped Red Square.
group exhibitions
Knoedler & Company, New York, 1983,
cat. no. 6.
Knoedler & Company, New York,
October 1984, cat. no. 4, color illus.
p. 5.
references
Cohen 1977, color illus. p. 233 (in studio, in early state); Kramer 1977a, color
illus. p. 17 (in studio, in early state);
Braun-Munk 1991, color illus. p. 75
(installation view).
comments
This collage was begun in 1975 as a
composition with black rectangular
pieces of paper pasted at the upper left
and lower right, overlapped by a large
red rectangle. That early version was
shown at the Gertrude Kasle Gallery
from November 1975 to January 1976
under the title Tipped Red Square.
Motherwell reworked it in 1984, covering most of the rectangular forms with
ochre paint and adding the tan, white,
and blue pasted papers. Motherwell
then retitled the work The Barbarians
Are Coming, from a line in the poem
“Waiting for the Barbarians” by
Constantine P. Cavafy (1864–1933).
co lla ges
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