Lot Essay
The Nighttime, Enigma and Nostalgia drawings constitute the first series based on a theme in Gorky's oeuvre. The prototype for the series was a pencil line drawing with faint shading done circa 1931-1932 (coll. The Museum of Modern Art, New York). The majority of the drawings in this series are executed, as is the present work, in pen, brush and black ink, which the artist manipulates with astonishing inventiveness as he defines mass and volume, and creates a rhythmical chiaroscuro:
"Certain of the Nighttime drawings have a sculptural reality and are concerned with the play of flat against volumetric shapes. Their images, specifically the pelvic shapes, relate to Picasso's bone figures such as his Seated bather and to Arp's reliefs of concave and convex forms. They often feature reclining figures juxtaposed with a round form which suggest Picasso's reclining bathers with beach balls. Clearly, Gorky was now extremely adept at unifying two and three-dimensional forms into a powerful totality." (D. Waldman, Arshile Gorky 1904-1948 A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1981, p. 31).
While the influences at work here are readily apparent, Gorky's subject is not easily deciphered, and the artist makes use of secret, personal imagery. The stylistic references are useful, especially in terms of Picasso's bathers, and an examination of these works in series is especially illuminating, as Harry Rand recounts in his study of Gorky:
The two uppermost cones are breasts, the elongated horizontal form is a head with a light-valued eye, the pinching of the form displays the waist, and the two lower branches are the legs of a seated woman, an odalisque upon a couch.
"In this image many of the complex, indeed multiplex relations surface in Gorky's art. His theme of the odalisque descends from Ingres (his gauge for quality in drawing), and from Picasso comes the code in which the symbols were recorded. Perhaps Gorky's own yearnings and loneliness occasioned the piece. Within this room, sparsely furnished, were the basic symbols of Gorky's desire for the material trappings and the human component of a home." (H. Rand, Arshile Gorky: the Interpretations of Symbols, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991 [reprint], p. 63)
"Certain of the Nighttime drawings have a sculptural reality and are concerned with the play of flat against volumetric shapes. Their images, specifically the pelvic shapes, relate to Picasso's bone figures such as his Seated bather and to Arp's reliefs of concave and convex forms. They often feature reclining figures juxtaposed with a round form which suggest Picasso's reclining bathers with beach balls. Clearly, Gorky was now extremely adept at unifying two and three-dimensional forms into a powerful totality." (D. Waldman, Arshile Gorky 1904-1948 A Retrospective, exh. cat., The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1981, p. 31).
While the influences at work here are readily apparent, Gorky's subject is not easily deciphered, and the artist makes use of secret, personal imagery. The stylistic references are useful, especially in terms of Picasso's bathers, and an examination of these works in series is especially illuminating, as Harry Rand recounts in his study of Gorky:
The two uppermost cones are breasts, the elongated horizontal form is a head with a light-valued eye, the pinching of the form displays the waist, and the two lower branches are the legs of a seated woman, an odalisque upon a couch.
"In this image many of the complex, indeed multiplex relations surface in Gorky's art. His theme of the odalisque descends from Ingres (his gauge for quality in drawing), and from Picasso comes the code in which the symbols were recorded. Perhaps Gorky's own yearnings and loneliness occasioned the piece. Within this room, sparsely furnished, were the basic symbols of Gorky's desire for the material trappings and the human component of a home." (H. Rand, Arshile Gorky: the Interpretations of Symbols, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991 [reprint], p. 63)