“I want to express the utmost intensity of the color...At the same t.mes , I would also like to bring out a certain immaterial character that it can have, so that it exists as a sensation and a feeling that will carry nuances not necessarily inherent in the color, which are brought about by juxtaposition.”
A dolph Gottlieb’s Istanbul epitomizes the elemental dynamism and tremendous graphic force present throughout the artist’s most celebrated Burst paintings. Executed in 1971, Istanbul represents a mature moment in the artist’s career, in which Gottlieb demonstrates his prodigious command of both gestural painting and color theory. In the present work, the red orb floats dynamically above a tangled mass of energetic earthy green and white brushstrokes, which visibly pulsate with psychic energy. In front of a crisp white background, Gottlieb creates a simultaneously chaotic and highly composed and balanced composition. Istanbul marks a pinnacle moment in Gottlieb’s career in which viewers are drawn into the volatile balance of Gottlieb’s spellbinding compositions.
“My paintings can represent an atomic bomb, a sun, or something else altogether: depending on the thinking of whoever is looking at it.”
Gottlieb was heavily influenced by psychological theories—particularly that of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. This led him toward considerations such as 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 to 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). Exploring these conceptual notions both through contrasting structures, depth of pigment, and tension between form and space, Gottlieb merges the psychological with the visual.
In a letter addressed to his friend and fellow painter Mark Rothko in 1943, Gottlieb writes: “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.” As represented in this painting through a single, balanced synthesis, Gottlieb demonstrates his ability to communicate radiant energy and immerse the spectator in a chromatic, almost hypnotic experience while all along maintaining a highly elemental composition.
