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D1097
[Drawing, They Will Take My Island]
1944
Graphite pencil and crayon on paper
22 x 30 in. (55.9 x 76.2 cm)
Recto, in pencil, lower right: A. Gorky / 44
Verso not inscribed
Verso not inscribed
Provenance
Exhibitions
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Golden Years of American Drawings, 1905–1956, January 22–March 17, 1957, ill. in b/w, p. 61; p. 22, as "Study for They Will Take My Island".
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Drawings from the Museum Collection, January 19–February 16, 1962.
Gallery of Modern Art, including Huntington Hartford Collection, New York, Major 19th and 20th Century Drawings, January 19–February 21, 1965.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Twelve Years of Collecting Drawings and Prints, 1953–1965, June 21–December 26, 1965, as "Study for They Will Take My Island".
M. Knoedler & Co. Inc, New York, Gorky: Drawings, November 25–December 27, 1969. (Exhibition catalogue: Jordan 1969), no. 79, ill. in b/w, p. 38; p. 59, as "Study for They Will Take My Island".
Brooklyn Museum, New York, American Drawings from the Collection of the Brooklyn Museum, August 23–November 5, 1972, as "Study for They Will Take My Island".
Rutgers University Art Gallery, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Surrealism and American Art, 1931–1947, March 5–April 24, 1977, no. 41, ill. in b/w, as "Study for They Will Take My Island".
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Arshile Gorky 1904–1948: A Retrospective, April 24–July 19, 1981, no. 180, ill. in b/w, p. 205, as "Study for They Will Take My Island". Traveled to: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, September 12–November 6, 1981; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 3, 1981–February 28, 1982.
Sala de Exposiciones de la Fundación Caja de Pensiones, Madrid, Arshile Gorky, 1904–1948, October 17–December 23, 1989, no. 79, ill. in color, p. 148, as "Study for They Will Take My Island". Traveled to: Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, January 19–March 25, 1990.
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (organizers), Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years, 1995–96, no. 32, ill. in color, p. 153, as "Study for They Will Take My Island". Traveled to: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., May 7–September 17, 1995; Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York, October 13–December 31, 1995; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas, January 13–March 17, 1996.
Brooklyn Museum, New York, Vital Forms: American Art and Design in the Atomic Age, 1940–1960, October 12, 2001–January 6, 2002. Traveled to: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, February 16–May 12, 2002; Frist Center for the Visual Arts, Nashville, June 21–September 15, 2002; Phoenix Art Museum, April 4–January 29, 2003.
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Arshile Gorky: A Retrospective, October 15, 2009–January 10, 2010. (Exhibition catalogue: Taylor 2009a), pl. 123, ill. in color, p. 284; p. 390, as "Study for They Will Take My Island," [exhibited in Philadelphia only]. Traveled to: Tate Modern, London, February 10–May 3, 2010 (Gale 2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, June 6–September 20, 2010 (Gale 2010).
Literature
J.R.M. [James R. Mellow]. "In the Galleries." Arts Magazine (New York) 31, no. 5 (February 1957), ill. in b/w, p. 52, as "Study for They Will Take My Island".
Reiff, Robert F. "A Stylistic Analysis of Arshile Gorky's Art from 1943–1948." Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1961, fig. 75, ill. in b/w, p. 353, as "They Will Take My Island".
Joyner, Brooks. The Drawings of Arshile Gorky. College Park: University of Maryland, 1969. Exhibition catalogue (1969 College Park), fig. 27, ill. in b/w, p. 41, as "They Will Take My Island".
Freedman, Adele. "An Artist's Descent into Death: Gorky's Early Years Were Chaotic, His Later Ones Were Even Worse." The Globe and Mail (Toronto), June 9, 1981, ill. in b/w, p. 15, as "Study for They Will Take My Island".
Lader, Melvin P. Arshile Gorky. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985. Monograph, fig. 86, ill. in b/w, p. 88, as "Study for They Will Take My Island".
Masterpieces in the Brooklyn Museum. New York: The Brooklyn Museum, in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1988, no. 146, ill. in color, p. 194, as "Study for They Will Take My Island".
Van Hensbergen, Gijs. Guernica: The Biography of a Twentieth-Century Icon. New York and London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2004, ill. in b/w, p. 159, as "Study for "They Will Take My Island"".
FitzGerald, Michael. "Picasso and American Art: Chapter Four (1940–1949)." In Picasso and American Art. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, in association with Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2006. Exhibition catalogue, fig. 90, ill. in color, p. 227; discussed p. 230, as "Study for "They Will Take My Island"".
Notes
The verso inscription information is known from the records of the Brooklyn Museum, New York.
Commentary
The drawing's overall composition is directly related to Gorky's painting of the same year, They Will Take My Island (see P288), from which this title derives.
The first confirmed owner of the drawing, the artist and gallerist Betty Parsons (1900–1982), met Gorky as a "friend and admirer" in 1938.1 In 1941, Parsons enrolled in Gorky's wartime "Camouflage" course at the Grand Central School of Art in New York, which convened twice weekly until mid-1942. She later recalled, “there were about 20 to 30 students in the class and they admired [Gorky]. I was in the class about three, maybe six months. And then after that, [Gorky and I] organized a drawing class together in my studio on [East] 40th street. . . . He was very anti-facility. As soon as you started to indicate that you were becoming familiar with what you were doing, he would switch you. ‘Now, drop that and start this,’ he’d say.”2
1. Betty Parsons, interview by Karlen Mooradian, Arshile Gorky/Mooradian Archive, Eastern Diocese of the Armenian Church of America, New York; Betty Parsons, "Conversations on Gorky," interview by Karlen Mooradian, May 9, 1967, The Many Worlds of Arshile Gorky (Chicago: Gilgamesh, 1980), 188.
2. Ibid.
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