At Five in the Afternoon 1949

Robert Motherwell’s ‘At Five in the Afternoon’ uses black paint, laid on thickly, to conjure the feeling of something both monumental and mournful. I can picture Motherwell in his studio, mixing up a batch of intense black, and then really going at the canvas. The way he’s built up these dark, brooding forms makes me think about the physicality of painting. The black shapes feel solid, almost like they're pushing forward from the canvas. They are looming and remind me of tombstones, or dark figures clustered together. There’s a real somberness here. Motherwell painted many artworks in this vein. Maybe he felt the same way, each time he painted them. The forms are so bold and direct, it’s like he’s trying to get right to the heart of some deep emotion. It’s a little like Goya’s black paintings. Artists are always wrestling with the big questions – life, death, the whole shebang. And they do so, by making marks with paint! Each one of these marks is a thought, a feeling, an attempt to make sense of it all.