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Lot Essay
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"Hybrid" Form: Arshile Gorky's Assimilation of Cubist and Surrealist Influences
In the introduction of the 1945 exhibition catalogue of Arshile Gorky's paintings at Julien Levy Gallery in New York, André Breton used the term "hybrid" to describe the artist's imagery. He wrote "Easy-going amateurs will come here for their meager rewards: in spite of all warning to the contrary they will insists on seeing in these compositions a still-life, a landscape, or a figure instead of daring to face the hybrid forms in which all human emotion is precipitated. By 'hybrids' I mean the resultants provoked in an observer contemplating a natural spectacle with extreme concentration, the resultants being a combination of the spectacle and a flux of childhood and other memories, and the observe being gifted to a rare degree with the grace of emotion" (A. Breton, "The Eye-Spring: Arshile Gorky", Arshile Gorky, New York, March 1945, n.p.).
The term "hybrid" means combining discrete elements to form a new entity is a particularly apt one for Gorky. An Armenian by birth, he emigrated to the United States in 1920 at the age of fifteen or sixteen (his actual birth year has never been established) and quickly learned to assimilate American society and culture. Fiercely proud of his Armenian heritage, he nevertheless adopted the American sensibilities of progress and modernity. In the process, Gorky had forged himself an artistic identity, including a new name "Arshile Gorky," his birth name was Vosdanik Adoian. Similarly, his paintings can be characterized as "hybrids" as Breton astutely observed. They show their debt to Cubist and Surrealist predecessors and yet obviously radical, new and unfamiliar in appearance. Gorky brilliantly assimilated the influences of modern art, namely Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Juan Miró and Matta Echaurren with direct observation of the natural world, and created a new kind of painting. Like the works by Joseph Cornell or Alexander Calder, Gorky's art defies easy categorization. His paintings are either or both "Surrealist" and "Abstract Expressionist." In fact, Gorky occupies a unique place in post-war art history as the master of both styles whose pivotal role allowed fellow artists like Willem de Kooning, who immediately grasped Gorky's importance, to forge ahead without abandoning the past. In tracing Gorky's own development as an artist, it is crucial to understand the evolution and sequence of Cubist and Surrealist influences on his painting.
When he arrived in America in 1920, Gorky was determined to become a fine artist. Virtually self-taught, Gorky was methodical in his study of modern art. He began with Cézanne, by copying his landscapes and still-lifes. Gorky could not approximate the colors of the French master since he was only able to study the paintings in books and reproductions. Still Life with Skull, c. 1925 is an admirable still-life executed in the style of Cézanne, expertly imitating his signature fractured brushwork.
In 1925, Gorky moved to New York from Massachusetts and soon became enamored of the analytical, then later synthetic, cubist paintings of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and by 1927, devoted himself solely to cubist experimentation. Gorky focused on pictorial form and inherent structure, grasping the essential infrastructure of an abstract painting. In a series of still-lifes executed between 1927 and 1932, Gorky flattened the elements such that they became overlapping planes of color with sharp, delineated contour lines. His paint surface was thick and textured with multiple layering. In Composition with Head, 1934 Gorky clearly borrows from Picasso in motif and execution. There is a large Neo-classical bust arranged with a fruit still life on the table; however, it is ambiguously placed such that it could also resemble a reclining female figure. Gorky's deliberate or maybe unconscious blurring of the resemblance of things is such that multiple readings can be interpreted, which is a hallmark in Gorky's paintings. What is even more compelling is Gorky's masterpiece from this early period, The Artist and His Mother, c. 1926-1936, a haunting portrayal of himself as a boy with his mother before she died from starvation and grief. The painting mirrors the pathos found in Picasso's pictures from his Blue period.
In February 1934, Gorky had his first one-man exhibition at the Mellon Galleries in Philadelphia. In the exhibition catalogue, the Surrealist architect Frederick Kiesler characterized Gorky as the "spirit of Europe in the body of Causacus, getting the feel of American soilUnswerving, critical reason seeks the quintessence of Picasso-Miró drunkenly absorbed by them, only to exude them in deep slumberhaving just quenched his hunger and thirst, is ready to shoulder down the doors into a land of his own" (F. Kiesler, Arshile Gorky, exh. cat., Mellon Galleries, Philadelphia, 1934, n.p.).
Arguably the most profound influence on Gorky's development as a painter is Surrealism. Just before and at the outbreak of World War II, Surrealist artists were forced to flee Europe, and most of them came to New York. In 1939, Yves Tanguy and Matta arrived; in 1940, Dali, Fernand Léger, Mondrian; and in 1941, Max Ernst, André Masson, André Breton and Jacques Lipchitz arrived. These European exiles created a unique enclave in New York, and their presence greatly affected American artists, namely the Abstract Expressionists, who were open to the Surrealist idea of plumbing the subconscious for artistic inspiration and their fondness for visual analogies and organic, fluid form.
In 1944, Gorky, Isamu Noguchi and Jeanne Reynal attended a dinner held in honor of Breton. Although they had a language barrier, Gorky and Breton immediately became friends; Breton recognized a kindred spirit in Gorky and the younger artist finally had a father figure to "guide" him. Many of the titles of Gorky's mature paintings came from a collaboration between himself, Breton Ernst and Gorky's dealer Julien Levy. It was a Surrealist practice to use poetic phrases from the writings of poets and philosophers their admired as titles of their works. Around the same time, Gorky's admiration for Miró intensified. He would have seen Miró's retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1941. There he would probably saw from the museum's permanent collection, Miró's Catalan Landscape, 1923-1924, where the Catalonian landscape of Miró's memory is portrayed as an explosion of the vitality of nature. Curvilinear shapes evoke body parts, animals, and flora, all intermingling and co-existing against a yellow sky and on sandy pink ground.
Gorky was also well acquainted with Matta who was instrumental in the change of Gorky's technique, which characterized his brilliants mature paintings of the 1940s. Matta admired Gorky's unhindered and masterful draftsmanship; he suggested that Gorky thin his oil paints with turpentine so that the pigments become like washes of watercolor and emphasized all the more the look of spontaneity and fluidity. This shift in technique seemed to have liberated Gorky and he went on to produce stunning masterpieces such as The Liver is the Cock's Comb, 1944 (owned by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo), Agony, 1947 (in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art) and the present work Year After Year also of 1947. Perhaps it is no coincidence, that Gorky's paintings of this period resemblance those by Matta, as seen in his The Earth is a Man, 1942. Matta's landscapes, which he termed "inscapes," depict phantasmagoric views of an alien landscape with electric colors and melting shapes. However, Gorky's keen observation and intimate view of nature, especially seen in his drawings made during visits to his inlaws' farm in Virginia, is a notable distinction from his Surrealist colleagues.
The Cubist and Surrealist influences on Gorky's art are clearly evident and yet, they are integral parts of the artist's unique artistic approach. Gorky masterfully created a hybridization of disparate yet rich elements in his paintings, most evident in his works of the 1940s. They are singular in vision and execution: the exultation of the fertility of nature and life.
See separate catalogue
"Hybrid" Form: Arshile Gorky's Assimilation of Cubist and Surrealist Influences
In the introduction of the 1945 exhibition catalogue of Arshile Gorky's paintings at Julien Levy Gallery in New York, André Breton used the term "hybrid" to describe the artist's imagery. He wrote "Easy-going amateurs will come here for their meager rewards: in spite of all warning to the contrary they will insists on seeing in these compositions a still-life, a landscape, or a figure instead of daring to face the hybrid forms in which all human emotion is precipitated. By 'hybrids' I mean the resultants provoked in an observer contemplating a natural spectacle with extreme concentration, the resultants being a combination of the spectacle and a flux of childhood and other memories, and the observe being gifted to a rare degree with the grace of emotion" (A. Breton, "The Eye-Spring: Arshile Gorky", Arshile Gorky, New York, March 1945, n.p.).
The term "hybrid" means combining discrete elements to form a new entity is a particularly apt one for Gorky. An Armenian by birth, he emigrated to the United States in 1920 at the age of fifteen or sixteen (his actual birth year has never been established) and quickly learned to assimilate American society and culture. Fiercely proud of his Armenian heritage, he nevertheless adopted the American sensibilities of progress and modernity. In the process, Gorky had forged himself an artistic identity, including a new name "Arshile Gorky," his birth name was Vosdanik Adoian. Similarly, his paintings can be characterized as "hybrids" as Breton astutely observed. They show their debt to Cubist and Surrealist predecessors and yet obviously radical, new and unfamiliar in appearance. Gorky brilliantly assimilated the influences of modern art, namely Paul Cézanne, Pablo Picasso, Juan Miró and Matta Echaurren with direct observation of the natural world, and created a new kind of painting. Like the works by Joseph Cornell or Alexander Calder, Gorky's art defies easy categorization. His paintings are either or both "Surrealist" and "Abstract Expressionist." In fact, Gorky occupies a unique place in post-war art history as the master of both styles whose pivotal role allowed fellow artists like Willem de Kooning, who immediately grasped Gorky's importance, to forge ahead without abandoning the past. In tracing Gorky's own development as an artist, it is crucial to understand the evolution and sequence of Cubist and Surrealist influences on his painting.
When he arrived in America in 1920, Gorky was determined to become a fine artist. Virtually self-taught, Gorky was methodical in his study of modern art. He began with Cézanne, by copying his landscapes and still-lifes. Gorky could not approximate the colors of the French master since he was only able to study the paintings in books and reproductions. Still Life with Skull, c. 1925 is an admirable still-life executed in the style of Cézanne, expertly imitating his signature fractured brushwork.
In 1925, Gorky moved to New York from Massachusetts and soon became enamored of the analytical, then later synthetic, cubist paintings of Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, and by 1927, devoted himself solely to cubist experimentation. Gorky focused on pictorial form and inherent structure, grasping the essential infrastructure of an abstract painting. In a series of still-lifes executed between 1927 and 1932, Gorky flattened the elements such that they became overlapping planes of color with sharp, delineated contour lines. His paint surface was thick and textured with multiple layering. In Composition with Head, 1934 Gorky clearly borrows from Picasso in motif and execution. There is a large Neo-classical bust arranged with a fruit still life on the table; however, it is ambiguously placed such that it could also resemble a reclining female figure. Gorky's deliberate or maybe unconscious blurring of the resemblance of things is such that multiple readings can be interpreted, which is a hallmark in Gorky's paintings. What is even more compelling is Gorky's masterpiece from this early period, The Artist and His Mother, c. 1926-1936, a haunting portrayal of himself as a boy with his mother before she died from starvation and grief. The painting mirrors the pathos found in Picasso's pictures from his Blue period.
In February 1934, Gorky had his first one-man exhibition at the Mellon Galleries in Philadelphia. In the exhibition catalogue, the Surrealist architect Frederick Kiesler characterized Gorky as the "spirit of Europe in the body of Causacus, getting the feel of American soilUnswerving, critical reason seeks the quintessence of Picasso-Miró drunkenly absorbed by them, only to exude them in deep slumberhaving just quenched his hunger and thirst, is ready to shoulder down the doors into a land of his own" (F. Kiesler, Arshile Gorky, exh. cat., Mellon Galleries, Philadelphia, 1934, n.p.).
Arguably the most profound influence on Gorky's development as a painter is Surrealism. Just before and at the outbreak of World War II, Surrealist artists were forced to flee Europe, and most of them came to New York. In 1939, Yves Tanguy and Matta arrived; in 1940, Dali, Fernand Léger, Mondrian; and in 1941, Max Ernst, André Masson, André Breton and Jacques Lipchitz arrived. These European exiles created a unique enclave in New York, and their presence greatly affected American artists, namely the Abstract Expressionists, who were open to the Surrealist idea of plumbing the subconscious for artistic inspiration and their fondness for visual analogies and organic, fluid form.
In 1944, Gorky, Isamu Noguchi and Jeanne Reynal attended a dinner held in honor of Breton. Although they had a language barrier, Gorky and Breton immediately became friends; Breton recognized a kindred spirit in Gorky and the younger artist finally had a father figure to "guide" him. Many of the titles of Gorky's mature paintings came from a collaboration between himself, Breton Ernst and Gorky's dealer Julien Levy. It was a Surrealist practice to use poetic phrases from the writings of poets and philosophers their admired as titles of their works. Around the same time, Gorky's admiration for Miró intensified. He would have seen Miró's retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1941. There he would probably saw from the museum's permanent collection, Miró's Catalan Landscape, 1923-1924, where the Catalonian landscape of Miró's memory is portrayed as an explosion of the vitality of nature. Curvilinear shapes evoke body parts, animals, and flora, all intermingling and co-existing against a yellow sky and on sandy pink ground.
Gorky was also well acquainted with Matta who was instrumental in the change of Gorky's technique, which characterized his brilliants mature paintings of the 1940s. Matta admired Gorky's unhindered and masterful draftsmanship; he suggested that Gorky thin his oil paints with turpentine so that the pigments become like washes of watercolor and emphasized all the more the look of spontaneity and fluidity. This shift in technique seemed to have liberated Gorky and he went on to produce stunning masterpieces such as The Liver is the Cock's Comb, 1944 (owned by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo), Agony, 1947 (in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art) and the present work Year After Year also of 1947. Perhaps it is no coincidence, that Gorky's paintings of this period resemblance those by Matta, as seen in his The Earth is a Man, 1942. Matta's landscapes, which he termed "inscapes," depict phantasmagoric views of an alien landscape with electric colors and melting shapes. However, Gorky's keen observation and intimate view of nature, especially seen in his drawings made during visits to his inlaws' farm in Virginia, is a notable distinction from his Surrealist colleagues.
The Cubist and Surrealist influences on Gorky's art are clearly evident and yet, they are integral parts of the artist's unique artistic approach. Gorky masterfully created a hybridization of disparate yet rich elements in his paintings, most evident in his works of the 1940s. They are singular in vision and execution: the exultation of the fertility of nature and life.