Oral history interview with Robert Motherwell
odd: label: General
content: Originally recorded on 4 sound tape reels. Reformatted in 2010 as 8 digital wav files. Duration is 8 hrs., 9 min.
name: label: Interviewee
content: Motherwell, Robert
label: Interviewer
content: Cummings, Paul
topic: label: Topic
content: Art, American
label: Topic
content: Painters -- New York (State) -- Interviews
label: Topic
content: Printmakers -- New York (State) -- New York -- Interviews
acqinfo: label: Provenance
content: These interviews are part of the Archives of American Art Oral History Program, started in 1958 to document the history of the visual arts in the United States, primarily through interviews with artists, historians, dealers, critics and others.
creator: label: Interviewee
content: Motherwell, Robert
label: Interviewer
content: Cummings, Paul
bioghist: label: Biographical / Historical
content: Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) was a painter and printmaker from New York, N.Y.
physdesc: label: Extent
content: 110 Pages (Transcript)
unitdate: label: Date
content: 1971 Nov. 24-1974 May 1
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Archives of American Art
identifier: label: Identifier
content: AAA.mother71
objectType: label: Type
content: Collection descriptions
label: Type
content: Archival materials
label: Type
content: Pages
label: Type
content: Sound recordings
label: Type
content: Interviews
altformavail: label: Existence and Location of Copies
content: Transcript is available on the Archives of American Art's website.
genre_format: label: Genre/Form
content: Sound recordings
label: Genre/Form
content: Interviews
scopecontent: label: Scope and Contents
content: Interview of Robert Motherwell, conducted by Paul Cummings for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, at the artist's home in Greenwich, Connecticut November 24, 1971 - May 1, 1974.
label: Scope and Contents
content: Motherwell speaks of his relationship with his parents; attending prep school; studying philosophy at Stanford University and Harvard University; his theory of automatism; European and American painters in post-war New York; teaching at Black Mountain College; teaching at Hunter College; his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art and other exhibitions; his collages with Gauloise cigarette packages; the photograph The Irascibles; his membership in American Abstract Artists; his marriage to Helen Frankenthaler; his use of color and light in his paintings; spending summers in Provincetown, MA; beginning printmaking; playing poker; working with the art dealers Kootz, Janis, and Frank Lloyd of Marlborough; his series Elegy for the Spanish Civil War, Je t'aime, Beside the Sea, Open, and Lyric Suite. Motherwell also recalls Peggy Guggenheim, Marcel Duchamp, Meyer Shapiro, Betty Parsons, Sam Kootz, Frank O'Hara, Clement Greenberg, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Ad Reinhardt, Richard Lippold, Tanya Grosman, and others.