The Creeks

Michael Goldberg, The Creeks, 1959, oil on canvas, 52 x 47 ³⁄₄ in. (132.1 x 121.3 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection, 1981.109.10

Artwork Details

Title: The Creeks
Artist: Michael Goldberg
Date: 1959
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 52 x 47 ³⁄₄ in. (132.1 x 121.3 cm)
Credit Line: Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Abstract
Object Number: 1981.109.10
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1981.109.10

Artwork Description

The Creeks is named for a sixty-acre estate in East Hampton, New York, which served as a summer gathering place for abstract painters in the 1950s, although it contains no recognizable references to either the house or the extensive gardens. Instead, reading meaning involves examining the way black is applied on top of blue and the insistently horizontal and vertical laying down of white, green, and yellow that give structure and reveal which strokes came first. Twenty years after painting The Creeks, Goldberg said he finally realized that he had always been concerned with “the human architectural response to nature and nature itself.”

Modern Masters: Midcentury Abstraction from the Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2008