SUBSTACK: I have a crush on Abstract Expressionist artist Arshile Gorky.
The modern artist who I would have been following around with puppy-dog eyes in the 1930s.
02.13.25 for Absolument !, my Substack channel
Happiest Valentine’s Day/Week to all who love and celebrate! Here’s an ode to an art crush I have on painter Arshile Gorky.
Arshile Gorky. I had seen his name often—in art history classes and plastered in biographical books about that era of painting (such as Ninth Street Women). It’s a name that’s hard to forget. The first time I heard it, I thought: “That’s almost Dorky.” And as a self-proclaimed dorky person, I respected that. In the last year, I spotted his name more frequently in books and saw an incredibly moving painting of his during my visit to Peggy Guggenheim’s palazzo-turned-museum in Venice.
I quickly became a Gorky Person.
It always seems that people are most attached to artists who have lived and died in tragedy. Gorky’s life story isn’t a sunny one (TLDR: it started with genocide and ended in suicide), but that’s not why he’s attracting attention. His refined work continues to speak for him.
The Arshile Gorky Foundation has a free Catalogue Raisonné of his work, available for researching and viewing online. How fascinating to be able to see his output all in one place!* The first half of the 1920s show more impressionistic work: streetscapes, self-portraits, still lives, and landscapes tinged with realism. We can easily identify what we’re looking at. There’s an abrupt shift in 1927, beginning with Still Life with Guitar. I almost feel as though I’m looking at a Picasso or a Braque, but I hate to jump to those cheap comparisons.