22 November - Robert Motherwell: Open

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Robert Motherwell, who died in 1991, was the youngest member of the Abstract Expressionists who also included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning and Barnett Newman. Robert Motherwell: Open, released this past April, is the first extensive examination of Motherwell's Open series. Motherwell began this series in 1967 and continued it throughout his life.

The Open paintings are fields of color marked with faint charcoal lines that seem to indicated a door or a window. These paintings are utterly pared down and minimal, and a significant rupture from his Elegies series, for which he is probably best known. This book contains previously unpublished paintings as well as works in public collections, this monograph--the most comprehensive and best-illustrated book on Motherwell currently in print is a gorgeous collection of some of Motherwell's most compelling and enigmatic pictures.

5 Sept - The Art of the Everyday

LAUNCHPROJECTS - Ben and I were at the post office buying stamps and found out that in March the USPS hired Jonathan Fineberg, professor and author of Art Since 1940, to select 10 seminal Modernist paintings to be reproduced as the "Abstract Expressionist" stamp collection. The stamps included in the collection are: The Golden Wall by Hans Hofmann, Romanesque Façade by Adolph Gottlieb, Orange and Yellow by Mark Rothko, The Liver Is the Cock’s Comb by Arshile Gorky, 1948-C by Clyfford Still, Asheville by Willem de Kooning, Achilles by Barnett Newman, Convergence by Jackson Pollock, La Grande Vallée 0 by Joan Mitchell and Elegy to the Spanish Republic No. 34 by Robert Motherwell. They are "curated" onto the page in a format to represent a museum exhibition. And I thought it couldn't get better than the Simpsons collection.

The Motherwell selected also happens to be one of the paintings that will be featured in Patrick McFarlin's upcoming exhibition "Obituaries and (mini) Masterpieces at LAUNCHPROJECTS opening September 16. More information on that show is on our website: http://www.launchprojects.com/

Pictured above: Stamps, McFarlin's (mini) Motherwell.