Dear Art Appreciating,
I finished a little thing, an object I hesitate to call a sculpture, because that sounds so purpose-built. I am feeling like this little remains of a weathered shrub and I have had a collaboration. We have merged our suchness and become one. Still, why the hesitancy to use the word sculpture? Let me tell you a little joke that we painters make: Sculpture, ah, yes; that's what you bump into when you step back to get a better look at a painting.
Another little joke painters like to make is this advice on how to succeed in painting: If you can't make it good; make it big. If you can't make it big; make it red. I give you here, a painting that is good, big and red, by Robert Motherwell, titled Phoenician Red Studio.
Phoenecian Red Studio is in the collection of the Guggenheim, Bilbao. Read a little more about it here, if you like. Two other good big reds follow:
Untitled (Red, Orange) 1968
From the Fondation Beyeler collection,
Basel, Switzerland.
The Red Studio, Henri Matisse.
From the MoMa collection, NYC.
More on this work, here.
