“His motif has orbited into electrifying new fields of color, the horizon dropping away completely, the globes, usually single, now taking on a new radiance, raised with an almost palpable transgression of gravity as they dip and swim steadfastly over the explosive calligraphs below—writhing, kinking, hooked, twisted, contracted, precisely exploded-all the verbs are active in this extraordinary visual grammar.”
V ibrant and energizing, Black Focal Point by Adolph Gottlieb is an instantly recognizable and exceptional example of the artist’s Burst series. A large rendition of the artist’s most innovative contribution to the Abstract Expressionist movement, the present work was executed just a year before his death in 1974. A mature example of a series begun in 1957, Black Focal Point represents a powerful union of radically opposing forms. The luminous scarlet background, black and white floating orbs, and tangled mass of black and white brushstrokes and splatters, all suspended in dynamic symmetry, evoke the myriad dualities and dichotomies underlying Gottlieb’s abstraction to produce a composition that radiates with intensity. While conveying the artist’s prodigious command of both gestural painting and color theory, the work resists classification with the “Action” or “Color Field” paintings of Gottlieb’s contemporaries. The effect is powerful: transcendent simplicity colliding with expansive monumentality.
Right: Mark Rothko, Light Red Over Black , 1957, The Tate, London
The suspended orbs in the present work provoke feelings of visual tension as they interact with each other and with the painterly splash at the bottom of the painting. As the black and white mass explodes in a frenzied, upward motion, the viewer is guided towards the center of the canvas, enticed to examine the purity of color. All sense of perspective and horizon are eliminated, allowing the two juxtaposed forms executed in Gottlieb’s archetypal palette of red and black, to become the focus. Creating depth within a two dimensional painting with masterful ease, Black Focal Point is a test.mes nt to Gottlieb’s painterly skill.
Gottlieb was heavily influenced by psychological theories, particularly that of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. His interest in psychology led him towards an even deeper examination of the conscious and the subconscious, and Gottlieb used painting as a means to prompt exploration of this duplexity both in others and in himself. The artist saw painting as a means of personal discovery, explaining: “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). By casting two such monumental masses in opposition, Gottlieb creates the visual equivalent to Jung’s acclaimed theory of the ego and the unconscious: two mental selves, neither of which can exist without the other. Exploring these conceptual notions both through contrasting structures, depth of pigment, and tension between form and space, Gottlieb merges the psychological with the visual.
Through the employment of elemental and powerful forms, Gottlieb articulates the depths of his psyche in minimalist form. The pulsating energy in the present work parallels the tension experienced in the natural world. As the viewer is met with hovering orbs suspended above a black and white chaos of painted streaks framed by a bright red background, one must submit to the blissful balance between, form, movement, and self.
