Robert Motherwell Paintings and Collages: A Catalogue Raisonné 1941 – 1991 Volume 3 - Flipbook - Page 72
c72
I only half noticed it and thought it
was charcoal or something and suddenly it dawned on me that more than
fifty per cent of the class as is true of
the population in general in New York
was Roman Catholic and it was Ash
Wednesday. And so in making this collage I wrote Ash Wednesday and rubbed
my finger in charcoal and put a smudge
in the center of the white paper. Which
was not meant to be comic, and I don’t
think even ironical maybe, as more
playful and astonished really, as though
I hadn’t realized that I was living in the
midst of a certain tribal custom” (see
“Writings by the Artist,” in the
Bibliography).
The work is inscribed on the verso
with the title “Collage, in Tobacco +
Blue,” yet the first time it was exhibited,
in 1958, it had already been given the
title Ash Wednesday.
c72
Helen’s Collage
Alternative Title: Collage in Deep Blue
Space
1957
Oil, pasted papers, and charcoal on
paperboard
30 x 19½ in. (76.2 x 49.5 cm)
inscriptions
Recto, upper right, incised and
inscribed: Motherwell 57
Verso (on typed gallery label on
original backing board) [revised ]:
“helen’s collage” 195[7]
present owner
Helen Frankenthaler
provenance
Helen Frankenthaler, 1957
solo exhibitions
New Gallery, Bennington College, Vt.,
1959, cat. no. 27.
Galleria Odyssia, Rome, 1962, cat.
no. 3.
New Gallery, Charles Hayden Memorial
Library, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Cambridge, 1963.
60
collages
c73
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
Robert Motherwell, September 1965
(traveling), New York, cat. no. 30;
Amsterdam, cat. no. 25, illus. n.p.;
Essen, cat. no. 25; Turin, cat. no. 25,
illus. p. 82 (pl. 22).
Museum of Modern Art, New York,
1967 (circulating), Buenos Aires, cat.
no. 5; Caracas, cat. no. 60, illus. n.p.;
Bogotá, cat. no. 60; Mexico City,
cat. no. 5.
references
Arnason 1966b, p. 32; Arnason 1977b,
p. 50, illus. n.p. (pl. 95, in studio, in
progress); Arnason 1982, p. 50, illus.
p. 128 (pl. 140, in studio, in progress);
Architectural Digest 1985, color illus.
(installation view).
comments
This work was originally consigned
to the Sidney Janis Gallery as Collage
in Deep Blue Space; this title is typed
on a gallery label on the verso.
Motherwell later crossed out this title
and wrote “helen’s collage” in its
place. When this collage was exhibited
for the first time, in 1959, it was shown
as Helen’s Collage. In a 2002 letter,
Frankenthaler herself referred to the
work as “Wedding Collage” (Dedalus
Foundation Archives).
