Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell

Helen Frankenthaler and Robert Motherwell

Art is an experience, not an object.
The game is organizing states of feeling.
Through painting I discover how I feel.

Innovation comes about
in consequence to need – profound,
relentless and unquenchable.
Inventing a new language is just staggering.
One has to cut and choose
and shift and paste,
sometimes tear off and start again.

True poetry is freedom
from mechanical response.
That’s why we love the work of children
and of the insane.
Our hearts can jump to their hearts
with nothing in between.

It’s true that every artist
has his own religion.
Walk on a rainbow trail.
Walk on a trail of song,
and all about you will be beauty.

 

From the words of Robert Motherwell
Linda Frye Burnham 2014

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Robert Motherwell, "Two Figures" (1958)

Robert Motherwell, “Two Figures” (1958)