Augury 1945

Curator: Adolph Gottlieb's "Augury," created in 1945, invites interpretation through its segmented composition. What catches your eye first? Editor: It's a little unsettling, actually. All those separate compartments, each containing these primal symbols, create a feeling of fractured unease. Curator: Gottlieb, associated with Abstract Expressionism, crafted this oil painting amidst the anxieties of World War II. Knowing that, how might it re-contextualize your unease? Editor: Well, the segmented form itself could be read as a manifestation of fragmentation, echoing the disruption of global conflict. Are we talking about material shortages during that time as constraints on artistic production too? Curator: Absolutely. Scarcity of certain materials forced artists to be resourceful. Also, the grid-like layout recalls architectural planning gone awry. You'll see how the application of paint shows Gottlieb built up layers in each segmented shape; he used the inherent materiality of oil paint and manipulated it as both the image and ground of the work. Editor: But the painting itself still functions in this very appealing, ordered grid which provides, for me, a method to decode the symbolic relationships, one segment at a time. An eye here, what looks like a totemic figure there... Is it drawing from pre-modern cultural symbols and languages? Curator: Indeed, Gottlieb incorporated images influenced by indigenous art forms; consider, perhaps, Native American and ancient Mediterranean cultures as means for connecting disparate temporal and physical locales within one material object. This was a consciously accessible symbolic vocabulary that artists could reach towards. Editor: That makes it feel timeless and immediate simultaneously, reflecting the idea that perhaps human experience is one that endlessly builds upon itself. The materiality of this image in oil paint, then, embodies deep history making this particular "Augury" still worth consulting today. Curator: Precisely. These motifs that he carefully painted still carry potency even now.