Adolph Gottlieb

André Emmerich Gallery Inc., New York
Seagrams Building Collection, New York (acquired from the above in 1958)
Christie's, New York, May 15, 2003, lot 106
Private Collection, Los Angeles 
Jason McCoy Inc., New York 
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 2008 

New York, André Emmerich Gallery, Inc., Gottlieb: New York, January 1958
Pittsburgh, The Carnegie Museum of Art, Carnegie International, December 1958 - February 1959, cat. no. 62, illustrated
Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Adolph Gottlieb, April - June 1963
Sao Paulo, VII Biennial of the Museu de Arte Moderna, American Section, September - December 1963, cat. no. 20, illustrated
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art; New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; Washington, D.C., The Corcoran Gallery; Waltham, Brandeis University, Rose Art Museum, Adolph Gottlieb, February - October 1968, cat. no. 69, p. 107, illustrated (New York), pl. 31, p. 59, illustrated (Washington D.C., Corcoran Gallery of Art)
New York, M. Knoedler and Co., Coming to Light – Avery Rothko Gottlieb – Provincetown Summers 1957-1961, May - August 2002, pp. 42-43 and 97, illustrated in color
New York, Jason McCoy Gallery, Black and White, November - December 2014

Lillian Lonngren, "Abstract Expressionism on the American Scene," Art International, Vol. II, No. 1, 1958, p. 55
"Dramatic International Opens Today," Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, December 5, 1958, illustrated
Gordon Bailey Washburn, "Pittsburgh International," L’Oeil Revue d’Art, January, 1959, illustrated
Hilton Kramer, "Report on the Carnegie International," Art Magazine, January, 1959, illustrated
"Modern Coup at the Carnegie," Life Magazine, January 26, 1959, illustrated
"Artes Letras," SDN (Sao Paulo), March, 1963, illustrated
Martin Friedman, "Adolph Gottlieb: Private Symbols in Public Statements," Artnews, May, 1963
"American Painter Wins Sao Paulo Competition," Washington Post, September 29, 1963, illustrated
"Blast II," Washington International Art Letter, February 3, 1964, illustrated
Mary Davis MacNaughton, The Paintings of Adolph Gottlieb 1923-1974, Ann Arbor, 1981
E.A. Carmean Jr., "Summer of Inspiration," Arts & Antiques, June, 2002, n.p., illustrated

“The role of the artist, of course, has always been that of image-maker. Different times require different images. Today when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt to escape from evil, and times are out of joint, our obsessive, subterranean and pictographic images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality. To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time.” Adolph Gottlieb

Created in 1957, the year in which Gottlieb first conceptualized his Burst series, Blast II is a seminal piece from this iconic body of work. One of the first three Burst paintings ever created, Blast II (along with Burst and Blast I) represents the series in its purest form: a white background with a colored orb hanging above a tangled mass below. Though Gottlieb would spend the rest of his life consumed by the series, making slight adjustments to both color and composition, these first three works remain the most elementally powerful. 

Abandoning linear formats typical of his earlier Pictographs, here Gottlieb concentrates purely on gesture, form and color. He juxtaposes two vibrant, almost pulsating forms afloat a monochromatic background, using only colors that he deemed had “a certain charge.” A rich emerald green orb hovers suspended in the upper half of the canvas, glowing, heavenly, with a lighter halo around the edges. Below this lies a turbulent tangle of dynamic black brushstrokes, messier and more elemental than its celestial counterpart. By limiting himself to a handful of primal forms, Gottlieb enhances the monumentality and universality of the work. The composition radiates with an intensity that exceeds physical boundaries, emitting a sense of movement and expansion.

Beyond the work’s formal qualities, Gottlieb succeeds in uniting the two predominant divisions of Abstract Expressionism, placing them in dynamic coexistence within a single frame. The black form in the bottom is painted in a choppy, painterly manner reminiscent of the active gestural expressionism of Jackson Pollock or Franz Kline, while the circle on top calls to mind the Color Field painting of Helen Frankenthaler or Mark Rothko. While the two schools are often seen as mutually exclusive, Gottlieb combines them with masterful ease, playing them against each other to enhance the texture of the work.

The Burst paintings are a series governed by, if not idolizing, duality and opposition. The stability and calm of the green only serves to emphasize and exaggerate the passion and energy of the lower form. The composition draws on the constant volatility and flux of nature and the pre-historic struggles between order and chaos, creation and destruction, earth and fire. However, despite these inherent contrasts, the masses are linked together, inextricably drawn to each other by an invisible force. In fact, it is this tension between the two forms that contributes to the work’s elegance and lends the piece its hypnotic allure.

Drawing heavily on the philosophy of the time, Gottlieb was particularly influenced by the work of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. From Freud he drew on the idea of the division of the conscious and subconscious, always striving to create something that was true to his inner self. Painting became a means toward self-discovery: “When I feel I am fully charged and ready to let go on the canvas, I’m not in a position to analyze and view myself in an objective way. I have to let my feelings go and it is only afterwards that I become aware of what my feelings really were. And for me, this is one of the fascinations and great experiences of painting, that I become aware of myself” (Exh. Cat., Los Angeles, Manny Silverman Gallery, Adolph Gottlieb, Works on Paper: 1966 – 1973, 1990, p. 9). From Jung he further drew on the idea of the binary, internalizing his assertion that nothing can exist without its opposite – that a being without opposites is completely unthinkable.

Ultimately, however, these dualities that govern Blast II do not create a divide, but a more complete experience. An artist that aimed to actively engage his viewer, Gottlieb draws his audience into his volatile yet balanced world. Best stated in his own words, the artist once said “the whole effort of my work is to get a totality of experience which is emotional, irrational, and also thoughtful” (ibid., p. 14), and with Blast II he is undoubtedly successful.