June Art Film: Robert Motherwell & The New York School

On June 11th Tuesday at 7:00 P.M. in the Vineyard Center, the Villages Arts and Crafts Association will present Catherine Tatge's Robert Motherwell & the New York School: Storming the Citadel. This film covers a period of art history which is within our own lifetimes. Most of us can recognize the names Duchamp, Pollock, de Kooning and Rothko; but how many know of Robert Motherwell?  His story begins on the Pacific coast, reaches its greatest moments in New York City (NYC) and ends in Provincetown, Massachusetts. One critic said his color pallet was based on the color of California summers: ochre for the hills and the blue of a San Francisco sky.  But this story is also about the New York School, a group of American artists and artists fleeing WWII Europe who created a community between 14th Street and Washington Square in NYC. The American Abstract Expressionist movement's primary spokesperson was Motherwell. He pulled together artists around the defining philosophy and the Guggenheim support. This put NYC at the center of Western art after Paris fell, and Motherwell at NYC's art center.

His story runs through the halls of Stanford and Harvard and including Columbia universities where his academic career redirected into painting.  Along the way, his interests were influenced by  Southwestern Native American artists, Duchamp, Kerouac, Jungian analysis, and much more.

The best part of this film is that Robert Motherwell, a true public intellectual, narrates his own story.

                                                                           by Pamela Oliver Lyons

Art Film:  June 11:  Robert Motherwell