Adolph Gottlieb
Crimson Spinning, 1959

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Crimson Spinning
Artist name
Adolph Gottlieb
Date created
1959
Classification
painting
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
92 × 68 in. (233.7 × 172.7 cm)
Credit
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Copyright
© Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc. / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.295
Artwork status
On view on Floor 4 as part of Freeform: Experiencing Abstraction

Audio Stories

On Gottlieb’s big bursts of color

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transcripts

SFX: Music

 

NARRATOR: Which part of this painting grabs your attention first?

 

SFX: More music

 

NARRATOR: Is it the red circle, slightly flattened, softly blurred at the edges? Does it look serene? Or threatening?

 

SFX: More music

 

NARRATOR: Maybe you’re drawn to the unruly black mass sprawling over the bottom. Does it suggest a kind of energy, or a mood?

 

Adolph Gottlieb painted this work in 1959. It’s from a series he called the Bursts. Here he is talking about them.

 

ADOLPH GOTTLIEB: These were sort of extremes, which I felt had no connection with each other but I had a feeling that I could make them cohere in some way. And curiously enough, they did.

 

NARRATOR: Gottlieb tried to eliminate all the traditional ways to make a painting come together, and just let these abstract shapes do the work.

 

GOTTLIEB: See, I never understand why my paintings hold together because I don’t have any tricks for doing it. If the things fall into place, that is what I feel they should do. You see, what it really is, is something you have in yourself that makes you feel, it gives the painting a feeling of unity, of oneness, and being all of one piece.

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Other Works by Adolph Gottlieb

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