Monster (for Charles Ives)

Robert Motherwell, Monster (for Charles Ives), 1959, oil on canvas, 78 ¹⁄₄ x 118 ¹⁄₄ in. (198.8 x 300.4 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.47.67

Artwork Details

Title: Monster (for Charles Ives)
Artist: Robert Motherwell
Date: 1959
Location: Not on view
Dimensions: 78 ¹⁄₄ x 118 ¹⁄₄ in. (198.8 x 300.4 cm.)
Credit Line: Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
Mediums: oil
Mediums Description: oil on canvas
Classifications: Painting
Subjects: Abstract
Fantasy — monster
Object Number: 1969.47.67
Linked Open Data: https://edan.si.edu/saam/id/object/1969.47.67

Artwork Description

Motherwell painted this work while listening to the music of Charles Ives, an American composer whose unexpected chords and musical phrases suggest images and impressions that we almost, but can’t quite, identify. Motherwell's monsters—the dark, threatening masses that loom in his paintings—express his anxieties as an artist and as a witness to a violent century. He had written a few years before painting this work that poets and composers, like artists, were "ill at ease in the universe" and their efforts were meant to bridge the gulf "between one's lonely self and the world." Motherwell dedicated the painting to Ives because he felt the composer understood the difficulty of making modern art that moves its audience without explaining why.

Exhibition Label, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2006