Arshile Gorky American, born Ottoman Empire (Present Day Turkey) c.1904–1948
About this artwork
Born in Turkish Armenia, Arshile Gorky immigrated to the United States in the 1920s and became an influential member of the New York art scene. Profoundly interested in avant-garde European art, he experimented with a variety of styles. Young artists working in New York were particularly stimulated by the European Surrealists, many of whom moved to the city before and during World War II and whose circle Gorky joined. The 1940s, especially the years 1944–47, marked the creation of his most important work, produced in a kind of stream of consciousness or “automatic” manner of painting. The Plough and the Song reflects the artist’s indebtedness to the lyrical Surrealism of Joan Miró, but the sketchy handling of paint, translucent color, and tumbling pile of shapes are hallmarks of Gorky’s mature work. A delicate contour line delineates the biomorphic forms in the center of the composition, in marked contrast to the loose brushwork that defines the background. The title signals Gorky’s nostalgia for his heritage, as the artist wrote in 1944: “You cannot imagine the fertility of forms that leap from our Armenian plows… . And the songs, our ancient songs of the Armenian people, our suffering people… . So many shapes, so many shapes and ideas, happily a secret treasure to which I have been entrusted the key.” Deeply earthbound and poetic, The Plough and the Song is at once a still life, a landscape, and a fantasy.
Date
Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.
Ethel Schwabacher, Arshile Gorky: Memorial Exhibition, ex., cat. (Plantin Press, 1951), pp. 41; 47, cat. 51 (as The Plow and The Song, c. 1947).
Arshile Gorky: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, exh. brochure (The Art Museum of Princeton Unversity, 1952), cat. 22 (as The Plow and the Song II, circa 1947).
Arshile Gorky in the Final Years, exh. brochure (Sidney Janis Gallery, 1953), cat. 10.
Ethel Schwabacher, Arshile Gorky (Whitney Museum of American Art; Macmillan Company, 1957), p. 114
Gorky, exh. cat. (Sidney Janis Gallery, 1957), cat. 25 (ill. as The Plow & The Song II, 1946).
William C. Seitz, Arshile Gorky: Paintings, Drawings, Studies, exh. cat. (Museum of Modern Art, 1962), pp. 45–46 (ill.).
The Art Institute of Chicago, Annual Report 1962-63 (Art Institute of Chicago, 1963), p. 15 (as The Plough and the Song, II, 1946).
“Recent Acquisitions,” The Art Institute of Chicago Quarterly 57, no. 4 (1963-1964): pp. 6 (ill., as The Plough and the Song #2, 1946); 7.
Arshile Gorky: Paintings and Drawings, exh. cat. (The Tate Gallery Arts Council, 1965), cat. 93.
Julien Levy, Arshile Gorky (Harry N. Abrams, 1966), pp. 21, 31, 36, pl. 183 (ill., as The Plow and the Song II, 1946).
Charles C. Cunningham, Instituto de Arte de Chicago, El mundo de los museos (Editorial Codex, 1967), p. 80 (color ill., as El arado y la cancion II).
Paintings and Drawings by Arshile Gorky, exh. brochure (Peale Galleries of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, 1967), cat. 3.
John Maxon, The Art Institute of Chicago (Harry N. Abrams, 1970), pp. 274 (ill., as The Plough and the Song No. 2); 281.
Acquisition Priorities: Aspects of Postwar Painting in America, Including Arshile Gorky: Works 1944-1948, exh. cat. (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1976), p. 36, cat. 3 (ill.).
Hayden Herrera, “The Sculptures of Arshile Gorky,” Arts Magazine 50, no. 7, Special Issue: Arshile Gorky (Mar. 1976): p. 89.
Robert F. Reiff, A Stylistic Analysis of Arshile Gorky’s Art from 1943–1948 (Garland Publishing, 1977), pp. x, cat. 79; 357 (ill., as The Plow and the Song (Wolf version)).
Diane Waldman, Arshile Gorky: 1904–1948, A Retrospective, exh. cat. (Harry N. Abrams; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1981), pp. 54-55; 58; cat. 203 (ill.).
Jim M Jordan and Robert Goldwater, The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue (New York University Press, 1982), pp. 89–90; 103; 481, cat. 315; 482 (ill.)
James N. Wood and Katharine C. Lee, Master Paintings in the Art Institute of Chicago (Art Institute of Chicago; New York Graphic Society Books, Little, Brown and Company, 1988), pp. 146 (color ill., as The Plow and the Song II, 1946), 166.
Judith A. Barter, Douglas W. Druick, and Charles F. Stuckey, eds., Shikago Bijutsukan ten: kindai kaiga no 100-nen (Masterworks of Modern Art from the Art Institute of Chicago) (Asahi Shinbunsha, 1994), pp. 176-177 (color ill.).
James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein, The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture (Art Institute of Chicago; Hudson Hills Press, 1996), pp. 92 (color ill., as The Plow and the Song), 159.
Nouritza Matossian, Black Angel: A Life of Arshile Gorky (Chatto & Windus, 1998), p. 425.
Arshile Gorky: Hommage, exh. cat. (Éditions du Centre Pompidou, 2007), pp. 92, 93.
Robert V. Sharp, Elizabeth Stepina, and Susan E. Weidemeyer, The Essential Guide (Art Institute of Chicago, 2009), p. 127 (ill.).
Michael R. Taylor, ed., Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, exh. cat. (Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2009), pp. 307, cat. 147 (color ill., as The Plow and the Song II, 1946); 391.
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Arshile Gorky: Memorial Exhibition, Jan. 5–Feb. 18, 1951, cat. 51 (as The Plow and the Song); Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, Mar. 4–Apr. 22, 1951; San Francisco Museum of Art, May 9–July 9, 1951.
Princeton, The Art Museum of Princeton University, Arshile Gorky: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings, Oct. 6–26, 1952, cat. 22 (as The Plow and The Song II, circa 1947).
New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Arshile Gorky in the Final Years, Feb. 16–Mar. 14, 1953, cat. 10.
New York, Sidney Janis Gallery, Gorky, Dec. 2–28, 1957, cat. 25 (ill. as The Plow & the Song II, 1946).
London, Tate Gallery, Arshile Gorky: Paintings and Drawings, April 2– May 2, 1965, cat. 93; Brussels, Palais des Beaux Arts, May 22–June 27, 1965; Rotterdam, Museum Boymans Van Beuningen, July 9–Aug. 15, 1965.
Philadelphia, The Peale Galleries of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Paintings and Drawings by Arshile Gorky, Nov. 9–Dec. 10, 1967, cat. 3.
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Acquisition Priorities: Aspects of Postwar Painting in America, Including Arshile Gorky: Works 1944 – 1948, Oct. 15, 1976–Jan. 16, 1977, cat. 3.
New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Arshile Gorky: 1904–1948, A Retrospective, Apr. 24–July 19, 1981, cat. 203 (as The Plough and the Song No. 2).
Nagaoka, Japan, Niigata Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, Masterworks of Modern Art from The Art Institute of Chicago, Apr. 20–May 29, 1994, cat. 61 (as “The Plow and the Song); Nagoya, Aichi Prefectural Museum of Modern Art, June 10–July 24, 1994; Yokohama Museum of Art, Aug. 6–Sept. 25, 1994.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, Oct. 11, 2009–Jan. 3, 2010, cat. 147; London, Tate Modern, Feb. 3–May 9, 2010; Los Angeles, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jun. 6–Sept. 20, 2010.
The artist (d. 1948); by descent to the Estate of the Artist, 1948; by descent to his wife, Agnes Fielding Gorky Phillips (Mrs. John C. Phillips) until at least October 1952 [Princeton 1952]. Mr. and Mrs. Stanley J. Wolf, Great Neck, New York, by 1962 [Seitz 1962]. Sold through Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, to the Art Institute of Chicago, April 4, 1963.
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