ROBERT MOTHERWELL PAINTINGS AND COLLAGES
A Catalogue Raisonné, 1941-1991
By Jack Flam, Katy Rogers and Tim Clifford
1,712 pages (3 volumes). Yale University Press. $300.

Robert Motherwell (1915-91) was a crucial Abstract-Expressionist. Most of the 3,000 or so works gathered here articulate the secrets that unfettered shapes and colors whisper to one another. Again and again, in series like Elegies to the Spanish Republic, Samurai and the monumental Open (“No. 87: In Deep Ultramarine,” above), Motherwell insists that the viewer listen to what the paint is saying. As Jack Flam writes in the introduction: “He created a language of painting — a vocabulary of formal patterns, colors and gestures — rather than a single, recognizable ‘image.’ ” This book is a riveting epic of one artist’s career, three volumes to live with for years and years.