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Still Life
Artist:
Arshile Gorky
(American (born Armenia), 1904 - 1948)
Date: ca. 1930-31
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
Overall: 38 1/2 x 50 3/8 in. (97.8 x 128 cm)
Overall, Frame: 47 3/4 x 59 3/4 x 2 1/4 in. (121.3 x 151.8 x 5.7 cm)
Classification: Modern art
Credit Line: Bequest of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.
Copyright: © Estate of Arshile Gorky/ Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Object number: 89.51
Terms
- Abstract
- Chairs
- Shapes
- Palette
- Blue
- White
- Purple
- Brown
- Black
- Yellow
- Red
- Abstract
In Collection(s)
Not on view
DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas painting. Bright primary colors in addition to white, black and brown make up the palette. Numerous organic shapes summarize the content. The color sharply delineates the boundary of each shape. The partially hidden background shapes are striped, as well as a brown kidney shape in the foreground. There is also a touch of texture hidden in the black shape at the center. On some of the shapes the brush strokes are visible. The yellow shape was painted over a darker color in one layer with wide brush strokes; the darker color is peeking through from beneath.
Exhibition History"Treasures from The Chrysler Museum at Norfolk and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr.," Tennessee Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville, Tenn., June 12 - September 5, 1977. (Exh. cat. no. 56)
"Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, 1927-1944," Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa., November 5 - December 31, 1983; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Calif., January 26 - March 25, 1984; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minn., April 15 - June 3, 1984; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y., June 28 - September 9, 1984. (Exh. cat. no. 55)
"Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective," Philadelphia Museum of Art, October 21, 2009 - January 10, 2010; Tate Modern, London, February 10 - May 3, 2010; LA County Museum of Art, June 6 - September 20, 2010.
"Remix: A Fresh Look At Our Modern And Contemporary Art Collections," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, November 2, 2011 - March 17, 2012.
"American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, de Kooning and Their Circle, 1927-1942," Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, January 15 - April 15, 2012; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, June 9 - August 19, 2012; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts, September 21 - December 30, 2012; San Jose Museum of Art, California, February 1 - June 2, 2013.
"Collection Conversations: Arshile Gorky: Between Worlds," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, July 1 - October 18, 2015.
"Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, 1927-1944," Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa., November 5 - December 31, 1983; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Calif., January 26 - March 25, 1984; The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minn., April 15 - June 3, 1984; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, N.Y., June 28 - September 9, 1984. (Exh. cat. no. 55)
"Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective," Philadelphia Museum of Art, October 21, 2009 - January 10, 2010; Tate Modern, London, February 10 - May 3, 2010; LA County Museum of Art, June 6 - September 20, 2010.
"Remix: A Fresh Look At Our Modern And Contemporary Art Collections," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia, November 2, 2011 - March 17, 2012.
"American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, de Kooning and Their Circle, 1927-1942," Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, January 15 - April 15, 2012; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, June 9 - August 19, 2012; Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts, September 21 - December 30, 2012; San Jose Museum of Art, California, February 1 - June 2, 2013.
"Collection Conversations: Arshile Gorky: Between Worlds," Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, VA, July 1 - October 18, 2015.
Label textArshile Gorky
American, 1904–1948
Still Life, ca. 1930–31
Oil on canvas
What shapes and patterns do you see in this painting? Arshile Gorky’s title, Still Life, suggests that this is a group of everyday objects. Perhaps you see a chair, a figure, or an artist’s palette. Abstraction allowed Gorky to share his personal experience of the surrounding world, but he did not explain the contents or meanings of his images. Working in New York, the Armenian-born painter produced countless works like this one, which pushed the boundaries of Cubism and Surrealism. Puzzle through his lines and layers to construct your own interpretation.
Bequest of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 89.51
American, 1904–1948
Still Life, ca. 1930–31
Oil on canvas
What shapes and patterns do you see in this painting? Arshile Gorky’s title, Still Life, suggests that this is a group of everyday objects. Perhaps you see a chair, a figure, or an artist’s palette. Abstraction allowed Gorky to share his personal experience of the surrounding world, but he did not explain the contents or meanings of his images. Working in New York, the Armenian-born painter produced countless works like this one, which pushed the boundaries of Cubism and Surrealism. Puzzle through his lines and layers to construct your own interpretation.
Bequest of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. 89.51
Published References
Martha Hutson, editor, "Stuart Davis, 1931," _The Artist's Viewpoint: Documentary Sources in American Art_ Vol. II, no. 3 (May/June 1975): 124-126.
Eric M. Zafran and Mario Amaya, _Treasures from the Chrysler Museum at Norfolk and Walter P. Chrysler, Jr._, exh. cat., Tennessee Fine Arts Center at Cheekwood, Nashville, Tenn., 1977. (Exh. cat. no. 56)
Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater, _The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue_ (New York: New York University Press, 1982), 38-43, 214, fig. 86. ISBN: 0814741606
John R. Lane and Susan C. Larsen, _Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, 1927-1944_, exh. cat., Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh, Pa., 1983, 106, 151, no. 55. ISBN: 0880390069
"La Chronique des Arts: Principales Acquisitions des Musées en 1989," _Gazette des Beaux-Arts: Supplementary_ no. 1454 (March 1990), 62, no. 311.
Jefferson C. Harrison, _The Chrysler Museum Handbook of the European and American Collections: Selected Paintings, Sculpture and Drawings_ (Norfolk: The Chrysler Museum, 1991), 180, no. 136. ISBN: 0940744597, 0940744627
Hayden Herrera, _Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work_ (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), 186, 760, Fig. 14. ISBN: 0374113238
Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 174-175, no. 108. ISBN: 0-940744-71-6
Agee, William C., Irving Sandler, and Karen Wilkin. _American Vanguards: Graham, Davis, Gorky, de Kooning, and Their Circle, 1927-1942._ Addison Gallery of American Art. New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press. 2011. Plate 22. ISBN: 978-0-300-12167-4.
Alexandre Beredjiklian, _Arshile Gorky: Sept Thèmes Majeurs (Seven Major Themes)_ (Suresnes, Paris, France: Alphamédian & Johanet, 2007) pp. 24-27, 29, 34, 71, Fig. 10. ISBN: 9-782915-483208
Ethel Schwabacher, with preface by Lloyd Goodrich and introduction by Meyer Schapiro, _Arshile Gorky_ (New York: The Macmillan Company for the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1957).
Michael R. Taylor, ed., _Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective_, exh. cat., (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2009), 177.
Provenance
Purchased from the artist by Mrs. Charles Mergentime, new York; Gift of Charles Mergentime to the Museum of Modern Art, 1953; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1953 - 1976; Jeffrey H. Loria, New York, March 1976; M. Knoedler and Co., May 1976; Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., May 7, 1976; Bequest of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr. to the Chrysler Museum of Art, 1989.
Catalogue EntryArshile Gorky
Khorkom, Armenia 1904-1948 Sherman, Conn.
Still Life, c. 1930-31
Oil on canvas, 38 1/2 × 50 3/8 in. (97.8 × 128 cm)
Bequest of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 89.51
Reproduction © 2004 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
References: Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater, The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue, New York, 1982, pp. 38-43, 214, no. 86; John R. Lane and Susan C. Larsen, Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, 1927-1944, exhib. cat., Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh et al., 1983-84, pp. 106, 151, no. 55; Hayden Herrera, Arshile Gorky, His Life and Work, New York, 2003, p. 186.
Born Vostanig Adoian in the Armenian village of Khorkom, the young Gorky lost his mother in 1919 during the Turkish occupation of his homeland. In 1920 he followed his father to America and settled near him in New England. Though Gorky took art classes at Boston's New School of Design, he was largely self-taught. In 1925 he left Boston for New York City and, having changed his name to Arshile Gorky (an invention typical of this supremely self-invented artist), he there began his career as an instructor at the Grand Central School of Art.
Extraordinarily eclectic, Gorky worked his way through a variety of modernist styles during the 1920s and 1930s, assimilating European avant-garde impulses with an intelligence and speed that few of his American-born colleagues could match. His Impressionist landscapes of the mid-1920s gave way c. 1927 to more constructed landscapes and still lifes in the manner of Cézanne. Around 1928 he embarked upon a long period of Cubist influence. In a series of semiabstract still lifes which includes the Chrysler's painting, he mastered the Synthetic Cubist styles of Picasso and Braque and then reworked those styles to fit the free-flowing, organic shapes of his emerging biomorphic imagery. In his powerful portraits of the period, Picasso's influence is equally evident.
In the later 1930s, inspired increasingly by the art of Joan Miró and Wassily Kandinsky, Gorky began to forge a genuinely revolutionary style. Shortly thereafter-between 1942 and his suicide in 1948-he produced his most brilliant works, a series of surrealist biomorphic abstractions. These key paintings exerted a formative influence on the Abstract Expressionists (see objects 83.592, 71.666, 85.43) and insured Gorky's place as a principal founder of the post-World War II New York School.
The Chrysler's painting is one of several still lifes from c. 1930 in which Gorky utilized the semiabstract, planar imagery of Picasso's artist-and-model interiors of the 1920s. (He had seen Picasso's 1928 Painter and Model around this time while baby-sitting the children of famed New York art collector and dealer Sidney Janis.) Yet Gorky, in his work, distorted this imagery biomorphically, creating exaggeratedly curvilinear, sensual shapes that are often difficult to decipher. In the painting the brown, kidney-shaped object at right is probably an artist's palette, with the legs of a chair visible beneath it. As Jim Jordan notes:
The palette . . . is studded with mouths, eyes, or navels (one cannot tell which), and it is connected-via a light, bulbous form-to what may have once been a Cubist compote at the center top. Questions of positive-negative [space] and image-ground dominance have not been resolved. Small white biomorphs on a large dark shape appear to sprout insect wings, mouths, genitalia.
Indeed, the palette and chair depicted at right may evoke the presence of a painter at work, while the dark shape at left may signify his nude model, reclining on a bright yellow chaise.
The painting's horizontal stripes-a motif owed ultimately to Picasso-occur as well in the contemporary canvases of John Graham, who met Gorky in the later 1920s and who influenced his move toward biomorphic imagery. The picture's dense, saturated color scheme of dark blue, red, yellow, and black is typical of Gorky's work of the period. So, too, is the thickly painted surface; Gorky overpainted his compositions repeatedly as he corrected and refined them.
JCH
Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 174-175, no. 108.
Khorkom, Armenia 1904-1948 Sherman, Conn.
Still Life, c. 1930-31
Oil on canvas, 38 1/2 × 50 3/8 in. (97.8 × 128 cm)
Bequest of Walter P. Chrysler, Jr., 89.51
Reproduction © 2004 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
References: Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater, The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue, New York, 1982, pp. 38-43, 214, no. 86; John R. Lane and Susan C. Larsen, Abstract Painting and Sculpture in America, 1927-1944, exhib. cat., Museum of Art, Carnegie Institute, Pittsburgh et al., 1983-84, pp. 106, 151, no. 55; Hayden Herrera, Arshile Gorky, His Life and Work, New York, 2003, p. 186.
Born Vostanig Adoian in the Armenian village of Khorkom, the young Gorky lost his mother in 1919 during the Turkish occupation of his homeland. In 1920 he followed his father to America and settled near him in New England. Though Gorky took art classes at Boston's New School of Design, he was largely self-taught. In 1925 he left Boston for New York City and, having changed his name to Arshile Gorky (an invention typical of this supremely self-invented artist), he there began his career as an instructor at the Grand Central School of Art.
Extraordinarily eclectic, Gorky worked his way through a variety of modernist styles during the 1920s and 1930s, assimilating European avant-garde impulses with an intelligence and speed that few of his American-born colleagues could match. His Impressionist landscapes of the mid-1920s gave way c. 1927 to more constructed landscapes and still lifes in the manner of Cézanne. Around 1928 he embarked upon a long period of Cubist influence. In a series of semiabstract still lifes which includes the Chrysler's painting, he mastered the Synthetic Cubist styles of Picasso and Braque and then reworked those styles to fit the free-flowing, organic shapes of his emerging biomorphic imagery. In his powerful portraits of the period, Picasso's influence is equally evident.
In the later 1930s, inspired increasingly by the art of Joan Miró and Wassily Kandinsky, Gorky began to forge a genuinely revolutionary style. Shortly thereafter-between 1942 and his suicide in 1948-he produced his most brilliant works, a series of surrealist biomorphic abstractions. These key paintings exerted a formative influence on the Abstract Expressionists (see objects 83.592, 71.666, 85.43) and insured Gorky's place as a principal founder of the post-World War II New York School.
The Chrysler's painting is one of several still lifes from c. 1930 in which Gorky utilized the semiabstract, planar imagery of Picasso's artist-and-model interiors of the 1920s. (He had seen Picasso's 1928 Painter and Model around this time while baby-sitting the children of famed New York art collector and dealer Sidney Janis.) Yet Gorky, in his work, distorted this imagery biomorphically, creating exaggeratedly curvilinear, sensual shapes that are often difficult to decipher. In the painting the brown, kidney-shaped object at right is probably an artist's palette, with the legs of a chair visible beneath it. As Jim Jordan notes:
The palette . . . is studded with mouths, eyes, or navels (one cannot tell which), and it is connected-via a light, bulbous form-to what may have once been a Cubist compote at the center top. Questions of positive-negative [space] and image-ground dominance have not been resolved. Small white biomorphs on a large dark shape appear to sprout insect wings, mouths, genitalia.
Indeed, the palette and chair depicted at right may evoke the presence of a painter at work, while the dark shape at left may signify his nude model, reclining on a bright yellow chaise.
The painting's horizontal stripes-a motif owed ultimately to Picasso-occur as well in the contemporary canvases of John Graham, who met Gorky in the later 1920s and who influenced his move toward biomorphic imagery. The picture's dense, saturated color scheme of dark blue, red, yellow, and black is typical of Gorky's work of the period. So, too, is the thickly painted surface; Gorky overpainted his compositions repeatedly as he corrected and refined them.
JCH
Martha N. Hagood and Jefferson C. Harrison, _American Art at the Chrysler Museum: Selected Paintings, Sculpture, and Drawings_ (Norfolk, Va.: Chrysler Museum of Art, 2005), 174-175, no. 108.