“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.”
A dolph Gottlieb’s Black Splash epitomizes the elemental dynamism and tremendous graphic force present throughout the artist’s most celebrated Burst paintings. Executed in 1960, Black Splash represents a moment of key innovation for the artist in which Gottlieb demonstrates his prodigious command of both gestural painting and color theory. Radiating with a crimson halo, the red orb floats dynamically above a tangled mass of energetic black brushstrokes, which visibly pulsate with psychic energy. Having been held in the prestigious collection of the Brooklyn Museum since 1992, Black Splash marks a pinnacle moment in Gottlieb’s career in which viewers are drawn into the volatile balance of Gottlieb’s spellbinding compositions.
Art © Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation / Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY
Black Splash is a particularly impactful example from Gottlieb’s Burst series given the incredibly intimate scale and the power of the iconic color combination of rich red and seemingly endless black. The Burst series—regarded as some of the most psychologically complex and visually stimulating works of Abstract Expressionism—represents a dramatic breakthrough within Gottlieb’s artistic oeuvre. As a founder and key figure of the New York School, Gottlieb first explored themes of symbolism and mythology in his Pictograph and Imaginary Landscape series from the 1940s and early 1950s. In the ultimate acceleration of these earlier works, Gottlieb became increasingly drawn to the transformative visual force of pure forms, and in 1957 further began reducing his compositions to this explosive format. Much like the present work, Gottlieb achieved his vision of perfect balance between form and color using the formula of a single, colored orb suspended above a dark, tangled mass. In the years to come, Gottlieb remained consumed by the incredible energy of this simple yet charged composition, repeatedly making slight adjustments to form and color in order to enhance the optical vibration of each individual work.
© 2020 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Right : Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1960. Sold at Sotheby’s for $50 million in May 2019 on behalf of the SFMoMA to benefit their acquisitions fund.
Standing before Black Splash, painted just three years after the artist’s first Burst painting, the viewer cannot resist the hypnotic lure that radiates from the electrifying tension between the two suspended forms. The radiating glow of the red orb draws the viewer’s gaze into the purity of color, while the gestural strokes of the black mass explode outward in a frenzy of motion that expands suggestively beyond the limits of the surface. This mass of black strokes is painted in an emotive, painterly manner reminiscent of the gestural expressionism of Jackson Pollock. This abstract energy is juxtaposed against the transcendent color and soft, glowing halo of the upper form, which calls to mind Mark Rothko's economy ultimate of color and form.
Black Splash marks the fulfillment of Gottlieb’s desire to resolve the external conflict of the psyche through his compositions. The present work realizes Gottlieb and Rothko’s earlier statement: “We favor the simple expression of the complex thought.” Through these powerful, elemental forms, Gottlieb articulates the tension inherent to the natural world, which unites the very principles that form the basis for Abstract Expressionism. Using simple, yet impactful, forms, Gottlieb’s Black Splash reverberates with a pulsating energy suggesting the very best of the artist’s iconic series.
