Lot Essay
It was Gottlieb's ambition to have the play of opposites in his works be seen as a dramatic metaphor for the deepest mysteries and poetry of existence. In Coalescence, one of the Bursts, the rich, painterly red ground provides a field for the dynamic interaction of the hazy, dark "sun" above the raw, expressionist brushstrokes of the burst below. The colors--red, white, black--are emotionally charged, almost theatrical. The sun and the burst seem to represent elemental forces of the universe in their vigorous opposition: life and death, heaven and hell, male and female, light and darkness. The power to create or destroy seems to be depicted in a cataclysmic amalgamation of frenzied activity and dark radiance.
Gottlieb's contribution to the visual language of Abstract Expressionist painting lies in his unique ability among the founding members of the group to unify gesture and field painting. Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko created large-scale field paintings, largely uninflicted by drawing or surface incident and Robert Motherwell's and Willem de Kooning's paintings seem to be all about incident, drawing and surface. In Coalescence, Gottlieb has reconciled surface and mark and field and gesture, to create a unified image of visual and psychological authority.
Gottlieb's contribution to the visual language of Abstract Expressionist painting lies in his unique ability among the founding members of the group to unify gesture and field painting. Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko created large-scale field paintings, largely uninflicted by drawing or surface incident and Robert Motherwell's and Willem de Kooning's paintings seem to be all about incident, drawing and surface. In Coalescence, Gottlieb has reconciled surface and mark and field and gesture, to create a unified image of visual and psychological authority.