Employing an interdisciplinary approach, this book breaks new ground by considering how Robert Motherwell’s abstract expressionist art is indebted to Alfred North Whitehead’s highly original process metaphysics.
Motherwell first encountered Whitehead and his work as a philosophy graduate student at Harvard University, and he continued to espouse Whitehead’s processist theories as germane to his art throughout his life. This book examines how Whitehead’s process philosophy—inspired by quantum theory and focusing on the ongoing ingenuity of dynamic forces of energy rather than traditional views of inert substances—set the stage for Motherwell’s future art.
This book will be of interest to scholars in twentieth-century modern art, philosophy of art and aesthetics, and art history.
- ISBN10 0367210444
- ISBN13 9780367210441
- Publish Date 16 July 2020 (first published 7 June 2020)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Taylor & Francis Ltd
- Imprint Routledge
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 114
- Language English