Wish I Still Smoked Gauloises Cigarettes

There is a stunning exhibition of Robert Motherwell's collages at the Paul Kasmin Gallery in Chelsea (on view at 293 Tenth Avenue until May 21st, 2016). Motherwell sets a simple thing like a cigarette wrapper in a background of beautiful color and thereby, makes it sing and change the viewer's heart rate.

And there are many more simple things on the gallery walls. Motherwell creates beautiful art from the stuff of daily life, the stuff at hand, the stuff delivered to him by the mailman. The remarkable emotional effect of his collages has of course to do with Motherwell's skill at selecting, tearing, pasting, and pulling stuff together to make an image. All that he knew about art also helped. But still, I find myself wondering about the difference made by the quality of the stuff he had to work with. I don't think the stuff of our daily lives is as good as what he had. For example, there is something very beautiful about the brown paper, many stamps, official labels, and hand lettered addresses in beautiful script that came with all the packages that Motherwell received, and then used in his art. Fed Ex envelopes and email messages just don't offer the same artistic possibilities, at least for me.