Small Burst
Adolph Gottlieb
ADOLPH GOTTLIEB, 1961. OIL ON PAPER.
“The role of the artist has, of course, always been that of image maker”, said Adolph Gottlieb, “[But] different times require different images”. Gottlieb lived through many different times; born in 1903, he left school at 17 and set off for Europe to learn art on the streets of Paris. Through wars, artistic movements, upheavals and changes, Gottlieb adapted his images to reflect to times and then, in 1957, his oeuvre apexed with the start of the Blast Series, a series of works that would continue until his death in 1974. Each ‘Blast Work’ follows the same format, a circular, more ordered form on the top half of the canvas and the bottom half is inhabited by frenetic, chaotic, distressed markings of pure energy. Gottlieb saw these works as the conclusion to the central idea he had been working on throughout his life. Namely, that opposites necessarily exist together. Light exists only with dark, calm only chaos and order only with disorder – these oppositional concepts are neither exclusive nor complimentary, instead they are requisites for the others existence.