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Lot Essay
With its swirling ethereal forms, the mirage-like Composition II, executed in 1943, is one of the watershed works that established Gorky's mature style. This picture marks a momentous breakthrough in his art when his many years of accumulating knowledge and absorbing influences finally resulted in the development of a rich and deeply evocative artistic idiom that would have immense ramifications for generations of American artists. Dorothea Tanning, the widow of Max Ernst and an artist in her own right, recalled Gorky's mature period:
'At times, someone appears who sees all. Gorky was one of these. Agonizingly, he saw everything that was being done in painting, and that had already been done. He admired certain faraway artists' works with evident passion, and, like a dye you swallow before the X-ray, it showed up in his own pictures. It stained them with the dreams of his idols until, in his last five or six years, and emerging from the spell as from anesthesia, he found his own way, solitary and sovereign. Proving, lest we forget, that it isn't always 'the early work' that defines an artist's worth' (D. Tanning, Between Lives: An Artist and Her World, New York, 2001, p. 48).
The main turning point for Gorky was his 1943 journey to Virginia, shortly after the birth of his daughter. Staying at Crooked Run Farm, the property of his parents-in-law, Gorky was intoxicated by this exposure to the countryside and to country living. He had visited Connecticut the previous year, but this second, much longer stay in the country, enhanced by the novelty of being a father, transformed his art. The countryside immediately reminded Gorky of his childhood home in Armenia, a theme which had continually haunted his works, but which now came to the fore with a lyrical poignancy in the shimmering landscape of Composition II and other works from the period.
Throughout his artistic development, memory and nostalgia had remained central themes. However, on his initial exposure to the countryside in Connecticut, and then his immersion the following year in Virginia, Gorky managed to fuse his nostalgia with his interest in the automatism introduced to him by Matta. Composition II is filled with glyph-like signs and symbols which hover on the brink of understanding, but remain ultimately intangible, as indeed was the artist's Armenia.
When Gorky returned to New York, he showed the fruits of his Virginia trip to the MoMA curator Dorothy Miller, who wrote of the encounter: "He came back with this huge portfolio full of those wonderful crayon-and-pencil drawings. And I was crazy about them. 'Now you must have one,' he offered. And I said, 'Oh no, Gorky. I'm sorry. I buy what I can but never accept a gift from an artist.' And it was a principle that we had here at the museum, unfortunately. So I said, 'No, I won't take one but I'll take three of them for an exhibition that we are going to send out on the road.' So that we did" (D. Miller, as quoted in H. Herrera, Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work, New York, 2003, p. 428). The present lot was one of those drawings which were included in the MoMA traveling show, Twelve Contemporary Painters.
The various elements in Composition II are apparitions that recall trees, bushes, rocks, and other such features. This is an extremely personal catalogue of landscape as memory, with the Virginian countryside acting as a prompt. His personal associations when confronted by his verdant surroundings there were intense in both the speed and the volume with which they struck him, and it is in part due to this that his most important works from this period were his drawings: writing to her aunt, Gorky's wife remarked that Gorky 'made only drawings, as he found that paintings took too long and he had too much to put down, and paintings anyway are better when not done from nature. Nature (he says) is so complex and confusing and one is too apt to get tired and take the easiest way out. A drawing is more direct and automatic, or should be, to have the lyrical freshness that a drawing should have, like a poem' (Agnes Magruder, quoted in M. Spender, From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 2000, p. 258).
Composition II is filled with this spontaneity, Gorky's inspiration pouring onto the surface in the form of the various elements seen both with his eye and with his memory. Many of the drawings that Gorky executed in Virginia during 1943 would later be used as the basis for paintings, and traces of Composition II can be remarked in his oil Virginia Landscape. However, these oils never harnessed the same intense spirit and immediacy that so distinguishes the drawings from this period. Indeed, the oils that Gorky now began to produce directly reflect the advances in his drawings, as he tried to mimic their look on canvas. Using turpentine to thin his oils, Gorky created strange, thin, phantom-like forms which deliberately echoed the translucence of his works on paper. In Composition II, this thinness, the lightness of touch that working on paper allowed him, is used to great effect to create a light, airy yet bustling parade of visions, merging nature with his faded memories to create a hybrid that is at once universal and intensely personal.
The spontaneous look of Composition II belies Gorky's painstaking exertions in assembling and crafting his glyphs. Gorky had been hugely influenced and liberated by the automatism of Matta and the Surrealists, but now used it only as a launching point. Likewise, Gorky had earlier been influenced by Miró, and while this influence is still evident in the calligraphic signs of this picture, they have transformed into something distinct and unique. Gorky has taken his symbols to a new level of the arcane, where his symbols are as unique as his memories, yet they remain vital keys to a realm of evocation that fills the viewer with an understanding of nature as well as memory.
Gorky and nature and Armenia had become inextricably intertwined, and from 1943 onwards the artist would spend an increasing amount of time in the countryside. Gorky was symbiotically linked to his art: the release visible in Composition II was evident throughout his entire being, and his pictures were extensions of himself. Agnes' letter to her aunt continued by commenting that, 'This summer was the real release of Gorky. He was able to discover himself and what he has done is to create a world of his own but a world equal to nature, with the infinite complexities of nature and yet sweet, secretive and playful as nature is. They are not easily understood but then neither is nature' (Agnes Magruder, quoted in Spender, op.cit., 2000, p. 258).
'At times, someone appears who sees all. Gorky was one of these. Agonizingly, he saw everything that was being done in painting, and that had already been done. He admired certain faraway artists' works with evident passion, and, like a dye you swallow before the X-ray, it showed up in his own pictures. It stained them with the dreams of his idols until, in his last five or six years, and emerging from the spell as from anesthesia, he found his own way, solitary and sovereign. Proving, lest we forget, that it isn't always 'the early work' that defines an artist's worth' (D. Tanning, Between Lives: An Artist and Her World, New York, 2001, p. 48).
The main turning point for Gorky was his 1943 journey to Virginia, shortly after the birth of his daughter. Staying at Crooked Run Farm, the property of his parents-in-law, Gorky was intoxicated by this exposure to the countryside and to country living. He had visited Connecticut the previous year, but this second, much longer stay in the country, enhanced by the novelty of being a father, transformed his art. The countryside immediately reminded Gorky of his childhood home in Armenia, a theme which had continually haunted his works, but which now came to the fore with a lyrical poignancy in the shimmering landscape of Composition II and other works from the period.
Throughout his artistic development, memory and nostalgia had remained central themes. However, on his initial exposure to the countryside in Connecticut, and then his immersion the following year in Virginia, Gorky managed to fuse his nostalgia with his interest in the automatism introduced to him by Matta. Composition II is filled with glyph-like signs and symbols which hover on the brink of understanding, but remain ultimately intangible, as indeed was the artist's Armenia.
When Gorky returned to New York, he showed the fruits of his Virginia trip to the MoMA curator Dorothy Miller, who wrote of the encounter: "He came back with this huge portfolio full of those wonderful crayon-and-pencil drawings. And I was crazy about them. 'Now you must have one,' he offered. And I said, 'Oh no, Gorky. I'm sorry. I buy what I can but never accept a gift from an artist.' And it was a principle that we had here at the museum, unfortunately. So I said, 'No, I won't take one but I'll take three of them for an exhibition that we are going to send out on the road.' So that we did" (D. Miller, as quoted in H. Herrera, Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work, New York, 2003, p. 428). The present lot was one of those drawings which were included in the MoMA traveling show, Twelve Contemporary Painters.
The various elements in Composition II are apparitions that recall trees, bushes, rocks, and other such features. This is an extremely personal catalogue of landscape as memory, with the Virginian countryside acting as a prompt. His personal associations when confronted by his verdant surroundings there were intense in both the speed and the volume with which they struck him, and it is in part due to this that his most important works from this period were his drawings: writing to her aunt, Gorky's wife remarked that Gorky 'made only drawings, as he found that paintings took too long and he had too much to put down, and paintings anyway are better when not done from nature. Nature (he says) is so complex and confusing and one is too apt to get tired and take the easiest way out. A drawing is more direct and automatic, or should be, to have the lyrical freshness that a drawing should have, like a poem' (Agnes Magruder, quoted in M. Spender, From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky, Berkeley & Los Angeles, 2000, p. 258).
Composition II is filled with this spontaneity, Gorky's inspiration pouring onto the surface in the form of the various elements seen both with his eye and with his memory. Many of the drawings that Gorky executed in Virginia during 1943 would later be used as the basis for paintings, and traces of Composition II can be remarked in his oil Virginia Landscape. However, these oils never harnessed the same intense spirit and immediacy that so distinguishes the drawings from this period. Indeed, the oils that Gorky now began to produce directly reflect the advances in his drawings, as he tried to mimic their look on canvas. Using turpentine to thin his oils, Gorky created strange, thin, phantom-like forms which deliberately echoed the translucence of his works on paper. In Composition II, this thinness, the lightness of touch that working on paper allowed him, is used to great effect to create a light, airy yet bustling parade of visions, merging nature with his faded memories to create a hybrid that is at once universal and intensely personal.
The spontaneous look of Composition II belies Gorky's painstaking exertions in assembling and crafting his glyphs. Gorky had been hugely influenced and liberated by the automatism of Matta and the Surrealists, but now used it only as a launching point. Likewise, Gorky had earlier been influenced by Miró, and while this influence is still evident in the calligraphic signs of this picture, they have transformed into something distinct and unique. Gorky has taken his symbols to a new level of the arcane, where his symbols are as unique as his memories, yet they remain vital keys to a realm of evocation that fills the viewer with an understanding of nature as well as memory.
Gorky and nature and Armenia had become inextricably intertwined, and from 1943 onwards the artist would spend an increasing amount of time in the countryside. Gorky was symbiotically linked to his art: the release visible in Composition II was evident throughout his entire being, and his pictures were extensions of himself. Agnes' letter to her aunt continued by commenting that, 'This summer was the real release of Gorky. He was able to discover himself and what he has done is to create a world of his own but a world equal to nature, with the infinite complexities of nature and yet sweet, secretive and playful as nature is. They are not easily understood but then neither is nature' (Agnes Magruder, quoted in Spender, op.cit., 2000, p. 258).