Robert Motherwell

by Mary Ann Caws

An eloquent personal exploration by a close friend, Robert Motherwell: What Art Holds is an essential addition to the literature on the artist and his work. Richly illustrated with pieces spanning his career - including twenty-one color platesthe book also includes never-before-published photographs of the artist himself. Mary Ann Caws discusses the artist's paintings, drawings, and collages in relation to the wide variety of American and European literature and philosophy Motherwell saw as central to his art. In a progression of critical meditations, Caws looks closely at series of his works, such as In Plato's Cave and Night Music, and at such great individual pieces as Gift, her inquiry gracefully encompassing the writings of Frost, Baudelaire, Mallarme, Kierkegaard, Stevens, and Garcia Lorca. Her reflections are grounded in an essential agreement with Motherwell that his work was a continuum: that his life and art were a matter of process, journey, and becoming, shaped by a willing