Adolph Gottlieb

Vigil
1948

Not on view

Date
1948

Classification
Paintings

Medium
Oil on canvas

Dimensions
Overall: 36 1/8 × 48in. (91.8 × 121.9 cm)

Accession number
49.2

Credit line
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; purchase

Rights and reproductions
© Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc. / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

API
artworks/2287

An important example of the pictograph series of paintings that Adolph Gottlieb produced between 1941 and 1951, Vigil is structured as a loose grid comprised of individual compartments. Gottlieb’s composition of the pictographs was largely the result of free association: he started with a template of rectilinear cells and, in a process reminiscent of the Surrealists’ method of automatic writing, impulsively filled them in with allusive symbols and totemic forms. Often the images in these heavily worked canvases achieve an uneasy compositional harmony; in Vigil the somewhat menacing quality of the teeth and eyes is counterbalanced by the biomorphic lyricism of oval outlines and snaky squiggles. Gottlieb emphasized the non-referential quality of his pictographs, insisting that their various signs and emblems “could not be read like a rebus.” At the same time, he acknowledged that “by the strange juxtapositions that occurred, a new kind of significance stemmed from this juxtaposition.”

Audio

Adolph Gottlieb, Vigil, 1948

From Signs & Symbols

0:00

Adolph Gottlieb, Vigil, 1948

0:00

Narrator: In 1948, Adolph Gottlieb painted this dark, enigmatic canvas dominated by images of eyes. Titled Vigil, the painting belongs to a body of work the artist called Pictographs. Like many other artists of the postwar period, Gottlieb preferred to work in a semi-abstract mode. In his painting, he attempted to tap into the world of the subconscious by using images and symbols open to multiple interpretations.
Notice how this canvas is divided into rectangular sections. Look at the one second from the left. An archaic face appears at the top, with the suggestion of a body and feet at the bottom. Now look at the panel on the far right. Notice the thick line that circles down from the top. It suggests a river, a path, or even a snake. Gottlieb found inspiration in African tribal and Native American art. Primitive art, he said, was in touch with the subconscious.
In a 1960s radio program, the artist described his Pictographs:
Adolph Gottlieb: (Archival audio from Pacifica Archives) I would start by having an arbitrary division of the canvas into rough rectangular areas, and with the process of free association I would put various images and symbols within these compartments. And it was irrational; there was no logical or rational design in the placing of these. It was purely following an impulse, trying to use the method of free association. And then when all of these images and symbols were combined, they could not be read like a rebus. There was no direct connection from one to the other. However, by the strange juxtapositions that occurred, a new kind of significance stemmed from this juxtaposition.
. . . My favorite symbols were those which I didn’t understand. If I knew too well what the symbol signified, then I would eliminate it because then it got to be boring. I wanted these symbols to have. . . a certain kind of ambiguity and mystery.