Robert Motherwell: Collage (BERNARD JACOBSO)

A number of Robert Motherwell’s most important early works were collage-paintings, beginning with his first effort in the spring of 1943, “Pierrot’s Hat,” made while working alongside Jackson Pollock in the latter’s studio. “I took to collage like a duck to water,” Motherwell later reflected, and he continued to “play with papers” for the rest of his life, esteeming his skill in the medium as one of his “chief gifts.” Collage also helped the artist reconcile his relationship to European modernism (particularly Surrealism) on the one hand, and American Abstract Expressionism on the other. Reproducing a concise selection of collages from throughout the artist’s career in full color, this volume also includes a series of “case studies” on individual collages and broader essays by critic Mel Gooding that examine their composition, palette and literary allusions, and Motherwell’s unique position bridging Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism.