Lyric Suite,

1965

According to Motherwell, Lyric Suite resulted from an epiphany: having purchased one thousand sheets of Japanese paper, “It came to me in a flash: Paint the thousand sheets without interruption . . . without revisions or additions upon critical reflection and judgment.” With rapid gestures experienced by the artist as so spontaneous as to bypass willful thought and provide access to unconscious drives, Motherwell produced between ten and fifty drawings a day by flinging ink onto paper laid on the floor. With ink flowing across the sheet, Motherwell claimed that the pictures seemed to paint themselves. Both Takaezu and Voulkos adapted the exaggerated, improvised gestures of Abstract Expressionist painting to the three-dimensional space of ceramic sculpture.