“…in my opinion he was the very best of the Abstract Expressionist painters”—Clement Greenberg

(C. Greenberg, quoted by G. Glueck, “Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies,” The New York Times, July 18, 1991).

Automatic Oracle
is a majestic canvas painted during a remarkable burst of creative
energy and painterly activity which occurred during the last years of
Robert Motherwell’s life. The artist’s robust brushwork and accomplished
composition are the result of a lifetime of painterly prowess, the
artist having been one of the longest surviving members from the first
generation of Abstract Expressionist painters including Mark Rothko,
Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Motherwell builds up his active
surface by laying down layer upon layer of acrylic washes; dark earthen
tones providing a foundation for an upper layer of warm sienna and
golden yellow that envelops the core of the painting. The composition of
this 1988-89 painting is closely related to Two Figures, a much
earlier work from the late ‘50s painted around the time of the artist’s
marriage to Helen Frankenthaler—part of a seminal series which is
closely associated with the two artists.

The eight by five feet canvas that is Automatic Oracle
contains all of the key motifs which Motherwell spent a lifetime
perfecting; brushwork that evidences the physical effort of painting; an
approach to painting that valued process (including allowing the
intrinsic qualities of paint as playing a vital part in the making of
the work); the vibrant colors set in contrast with the deepest of black
pigment (Motherwell’s signature ochres, white shadings, yellows, set
against inky blacks), bold gestural brushstrokes and broad expanses of
canvas that suggest the open physical space of landscape. Also present
here is the juxtaposition of straight lines against curves that as a
draughtsman he relished.

The title of the painting may have
been derived from a collection of poetry by Peter Porter, an
Australian-born poet, critic and translator and published in 1987—the
year before the present work was painted. Some of the themes addressed
by Porter’s poems included language, childhood, dreams and,
appropriately enough for Motherwell, painting. The “oracle” of Porter’s
title was a reference to the English language and the many and complex
uses of language was of interest to Motherwell, who had an advanced
degree in philosophy and was famous for being well-read.

Perhaps
the word “automatic” resonated for Motherwell, too, given his interest
in automatism, an approach to drawing that attempted to tap the
unconscious as a source of inspiration, and which Motherwell learned
from the Chilean Surrealist artist Matta. "You let the brush take over
and in a way follow its own head,” Motherwell once said, “and in the
brush doing what it's doing, it will stumble on what one couldn't by
oneself… "It's essential to fracture influences in the same way that
free association in psychoanalysis helps to fracture one's social
self-deceptions…” Motherwell commented in regard to automatic drawing
(G. Glueck, “Robert Motherwell, Master of Abstract, Dies,” New York Times, July 18, 1991).

Motherwell
once remarked that his paintings must have ''immediacy, passion or
tenderness; beingness, as such, detachment, sheer presence as a
modulation of the flat picture plane, true invention and search, light,
an unexpected end, mainly warm earth colors and black and white, a
certain stalwartness'' (G. Glueck, “The Mastery of Robert Motherwell,” The New York Times,
December 2, 1984). If each and every one of those elements are not
present in each one of his paintings, certainly the list suggests what
Motherwell strove to include.

Like
his monumental canvases, Motherwell has become a towering influence in
20th century American art. He was the artist who coined the term “The
School of New York” and was one of its charter members, a figure who
became synonymous with the name and he even came to outlast them all.
Although one of the last large-scale canvases that the artist ever
produced its dynamic surface shows no sign of him slowing down. Indeed
it can be said to live up to the praise of that champion of mid-century
American painting Clement Greenberg who said simply, “…in
my opinion he was the very best of the Abstract Expressionist painters”
(C. Greenberg, quoted by G. Glueck, “Robert Motherwell, Master of
Abstract, Dies,” The New York Times, July 18, 1991).