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Apaquogue
Artist
Adolph Gottlieb
(American, 1903 - 1974)
Date1961
MediumOil on canvas
DimensionsUnframed: 72 1/4 x 90 1/4 x 1 1/2 in. (183.52 x 229.24 x 3.81 cm)
Framed: 72 15/16 x 91 x 2 in. (185.26 x 231.14 x 5.08 cm)
Framed: 72 15/16 x 91 x 2 in. (185.26 x 231.14 x 5.08 cm)
Credit LineCollection of the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Museum purchase, The Benjamin J. Tillar Memorial Trust
Object number1984.3
Status
On viewInscribedcannot verify because of backing
Copyright©2020 Adolph and Ester Gottlieb Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Category
Label TextAdolph Gottlieb’s Burst paintings are widely considered to represent the artist’s signature style. Begun in 1957, the works in the series follow a two-part compositional format, with one or more colored spheres, or “bursts,” suspended in a neutral monochrome background over an energetic passage of calligraphic black brushwork. In the Modern’s Apaquogue, 1961, three radiating spheres painted in saturated shades of crimson, pale pink, and salmon hover over an explosion of rapidly swept and splattered black paint.
Gottlieb’s Burst paintings embody many of the characteristics associated with the Abstract Expressionist style—simplified nonreferential forms, gestural paint application, and expansive scale. With their contrasting sections, the Bursts strike a dynamic balance between the two main tendencies of Abstract Expressionist painting: the Color Field school, exemplified by Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, and the Action painting approach of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
Apaquogue is the Native American name for the area where Gottlieb lived in East Hampton; it was also the name of a road by the ocean near his home. The Modern’s painting, like all those in the Burst series, could be described as an abstract landscape. The space between the bursts and the gestural field implies a horizon line, while the blank background above suggests an open sky. The hot-colored orbs might evoke suns setting over a turbulent sea. More essentially, the painting is a grand play of opposites held in perpetual tension, among them form and void, color and monochrome, stillness and movement, control and freedom.
Gottlieb’s Burst paintings embody many of the characteristics associated with the Abstract Expressionist style—simplified nonreferential forms, gestural paint application, and expansive scale. With their contrasting sections, the Bursts strike a dynamic balance between the two main tendencies of Abstract Expressionist painting: the Color Field school, exemplified by Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, and the Action painting approach of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
Apaquogue is the Native American name for the area where Gottlieb lived in East Hampton; it was also the name of a road by the ocean near his home. The Modern’s painting, like all those in the Burst series, could be described as an abstract landscape. The space between the bursts and the gestural field implies a horizon line, while the blank background above suggests an open sky. The hot-colored orbs might evoke suns setting over a turbulent sea. More essentially, the painting is a grand play of opposites held in perpetual tension, among them form and void, color and monochrome, stillness and movement, control and freedom.