Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné
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Catalogue Entry

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Photo: © Art Gallery of Ontario 80/71
P288
They Will Take My Island
1944
Oil on canvas
38 1/16 x 48 1/16 in. (96.7 x 122.1 cm)
Not inscribed
Collection, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
Purchased with assistance from the Volunteer Committee Fund, 1980. Acc. 80/71.
Exhibitions
1945a New York
Julien Levy Gallery, New York, Arshile Gorky, March 6–31, 1945. (Exhibition brochure: Breton 1945b), no. 6, as They Will Take My Island.
1951a New York
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, Arshile Gorky Memorial Exhibition, January 5–February 18, 1951, no. 35, p. 47, as They Will Take My Island (exhibited in New York only). Traveled to: Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, March 4–April 22, 1951; San Francisco Museum of Art, California, May 9–July 9, 1951.
1961a New York
Otto Gerson Gallery, New York, Modern Works Lent by Distinguished Artists, Writers, Architects, February 28–March 25, 1961, as They Will Take My Island.
1961–62, 1965 SRGM–USIA
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum for the United States Information Agency, Washington, D.C., Vanguard American Painting, 1961–62, no. 26, ill. in b/w, as They Will Take My Island, lent by Jeanne Reynal, New York. Traveled to: Galerie Würthle, Vienna, June 19–July 18, 1961; Zwerglgarten, Salzburg, July 10–August 31, 1961; Kalemegdan Pavilion, Belgrade, Yugoslavia, September 15–October 1, 1961; Umetnicki Pavilion, Skoplje, Yugoslavia, October 14–29, 1961; Moderna Galerija, Zagreb, Yugoslavia, November 9–20, 1961; Umetnostna Galerija, Maribor, Yugoslavia, November 25–December 4, 1961; Moderna Galerija, Ljubljana, Yugoslavia, December 11, 1961–January 7, 1962; Rijeka, Yugoslavia, January 3–31, 1962; American Embassy, USIS Gallery, London, March 1–15, 1962; Hessiche Landesmuseum, Darmstadt, Germany, April 14–May 13, 1962; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., May 25–July 5, 1965.
1962 Venice
XXXI Biennale di Venezia: Internazionale d'Arte, U.S. Pavillion, Venice, Italy, Arshile Gorky, June 16–October 7, 1962, no. 23, ill. in b/w, pl. 92; p. 114, as "Vogliono prendere la mia isola," dated 1947.
1962–63b New York
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Arshile Gorky, 1904–1948, December 19, 1962–February 12, 1963. (Exhibition catalogue: Seitz 1962), no. 70, p. 54, as They Will Take My Island. Traveled to: Washington Gallery of Modern Art, D.C., March 12–April 14, 1963.
1965 AC–Brussels and Rotterdam
Arts Council of Great Britain, London (organizer), Arshile Gorky, Paintings and Drawings / Arshile Gorky: Schilderijen en Tekeningen, 1965, no. 74, as "Zij zullen mij mijn eiland ontnemen / They will take my island". Traveled to: Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, May 22–June 27, 1965; Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, July 24–September 5, 1965 (Museum Boymans van Beuingen 1965).
1965 AC–London
Arts Council of Great Britain, London (organizer), Tate Gallery, Arshile Gorky: Paintings and Drawings, April 2–May 2, 1965, no. 62, as They Will Take My Island.
1981–82 New York
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Arshile Gorky 1904–1948: A Retrospective, April 24–July 19, 1981, no. 181, ill. in color, p. 206, as 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.
1995–96 Fort Worth / Buffalo
Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo (organizers), Arshile Gorky: The Breakthrough Years, 1995–96, no. 10, ill. in color, p. 109, as 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.
Literature
Greenberg 1945a
Greenberg, Clement. "Art." The Nation (New York) 160 (March 24, 1945), discussed p. 343, as They Will Take My Island.
Jewell 1945a
Jewell, Edward Alden. "Art Old and New." New York Times, March 11, 1945, discussed, p. X8, as They Will Take My Island.
View 1945a
"Julien Levy Gallery (advertisement)." View (New York) 5, no. 1 (March 1945), ill. in b/w, p. 44, as They Will Take My Island.
Greenberg 1946a
Greenberg, Clement. "Art." The Nation (New York) 162 (May 4, 1946), discussed p. 552, as "Island".
Loftus 1952
Loftus, John. "Arshile Gorky: A Monograph." M.A. Thesis, Columbia University, New York, 1952, pl. XXXIII, ill. in b/w, erroneously as The Delicate Game.
Arti Visive 1957
"Special issue on Gorky in Italian and English with text by Toti Scialoja and excerpts from Schwabacher 1957." Arti Visive 6–7 (Summer 1957), no. 13, ill. in b/w, as They Will Take My Island.
Schwabacher 1957
Schwabacher, Ethel. Arshile Gorky. Introduction by Meyer Schapiro. New York: The Macmillan Company for the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1957. Monograph, discussed p. 115, as They Will Take My Island.
Reiff 1961
Reiff, Robert F. "A Stylistic Analysis of Arshile Gorky's Art from 1943–1948." Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, New York, 1961, fig. 76, ill. in b/w, p. 354, as They Will Take My Island.
Rosenberg 1962a
Rosenberg, Harold. Arshile Gorky: The Man, the Time, the Idea. New York: Horizon Press, 1962. Monograph, ill. in b/w, p. 83, as They Will Take My Island.
Levy 1966
Levy, Julien. Arshile Gorky. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1966. Monograph, pl. 97, ill. in color, p. 121, as They Will Take My Island.
Foster 1976
Foster, Stephen C. "Making a Movement Modern: The Role of the Avant-Garde Critic." Art International (Paris) 20 (October–November 1976), discussed p. 60, as They Will Take My Island.
Jordan 1976
Jordan, Jim. M. "Arshile Gorky at Crooked Run Farm." Arts Magazine (New York) 50, no. 7 (March 1976), discussed p. 100, as They Will Take My Island.
Daily Sentinel 1980
"Gallery Gains." Daily Sentinel (Scottsboro, AL), December 14, 1980, discussed, p. 13, as They Will Take My Island.
Waldman 1981
Waldman, Diane. "Arshile Gorky: Poet in Paint." In Arshile Gorky 1904–1948: A Retrospective. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in collaboration with The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1981. Exhibition catalogue, discussed p. 54, as They Will Take My Island.
Jordan 1982a
Jordan, Jim M. "The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: New Discoveries, New Sources, and Chronology." In The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue, by Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater. New York and London: New York University Press, 1982, discussed pp. 86–87, as They Will Take My Island.
Jordan 1982b
Jordan, Jim M. "Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings." In The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue, by Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater. New York and London: New York University Press, 1982, no. 288, ill. in b/w, pp. 443–44, as They Will Take My Island.
Lader 1985
Lader, Melvin P. Arshile Gorky. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985. Monograph, fig. 87, ill. in color, p. 88, as They Will Take My Island.
Corrin 1990
Corrin, Lisa. "Toward Armenia: Notes of a Journey." In Arshile Gorky: 1904–1948. London: Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1990. Exhibition catalogue, fig. 4, ill. in b/w, p. 176, as They Will Take My Island.
Matossian 1998a
Matossian, Nouritza. "Arshile Gorky's Lost World: A Personal Quest for the Armenian Sources of Gorky's Art." Modern Painters (New York) 11 (Winter 1998), ill. in color, p. 75, as They Will Take My Island.
Matossian 1998b
Matossian, Nouritza. Black Angel: The Life of Arshile Gorky. London: Chatto & Windus, 1998, pl. 8, ill. in color, as They Will Take My Island.
Spender 1999
Spender, Matthew. From a High Place: A Life of Arshile Gorky. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1999, ill. in b/w, p. 293, as They Will Take My Island.
Herrera 2003
Herrera, Hayden. Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003, fig. 162, ill. in color, as They Will Take My Island.
FitzGerald 2006b
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. 91, ill. in b/w, p. 227; discussed p. 230, as They Will Take My Island.
Mattison 2009
Matttison, Robert S. Arshile Gorky: Works and Writings. Barcelona: Ediciones Polígrafica, 2009. Monograph, ill. in color, p. 89, as They Will Take My Island.
Spender 2010
Spender, Matthew. Una storia armena Vita di Arshile Gorky. Florence: Barbès Editore, 2010, ill. in b/w, p. 331; p. 428, as They Will Take My Island.
Notes

Reverse, upper stretcher bar, left [possibly in artist's hand]: THEY WILL TAKE MY ISLAND; center [not in artist's hand]: ↑; 62.1182; center stretcher bar: REYNAL

The reverse inscription information and marking on the upper and center stretcher bar are known from a photograph provided by the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.

Commentary

The painting's overall composition is prefigured in a drawing of the same year (see related work).

The painting is one of the nine canvases that were included in Gorky's debut solo show at the Julien Levy Gallery in New York. Although the show itself was not favourably covered, this painting was celebrated. In his largely negative review, the influential critic Clement Greenberg (1909–1994) extolled: "The most recently executed picture at his show, called They Will Take My Island—black looping lines and transparent washes on a white ground—indicates a partial return to serious painting and shows Gorky for the first time as almost completely original."1 The painting would go on to foreshadow much of Gorky's work from 1945.

Its title was selected with the help of André Breton (1896–1966) who visited Gorky in Roxbury, Connecticut, on New Year's Eve 1945, and multiple times in his studio at 36 Union Square, before the exhibition opened in March 1945.

Agnes "Mougouch" Gorky (1921–2013) later explained the resulting method's genesis in a collaborative play of associations: "Breton told Gorky to bring out his work and to talk about each one as it came up, which Gorky did, very freely and easily. Breton chose an appropriate fragment from Gorky's words. After a while, Gorky got the hang of it, and could cho[o]se titles by himself. . . . For later shows this [collaboration] was not necessary—[Gorky] found a title easily—but for many years before 1945 he hadn't thought in terms of titles as no painting ever seemed finished to him."2 According to Mougouch, "words, explanations and titles did not interest [Gorky] unless they aroused some remembered feeling."3

1. Clement Greenberg, "Art," The Nation (New York) 160 (March 24, 1945): 343.

2. Agnes Gorky Fielding, interview by Matthew Spender, October 1, 1991, transcript, Matthew Spender Papers, AGF Archives; see also: Agnes Gorky Fielding, "How Breton and Gorky Worked on Titles," December 22–28, 1993, in Matthew Spender, ed., Arshile Gorky: The Plow and the Song: A Life in Letters and Documents (Zurich: Hauser & Wirth Publishers, 2018), 336. 

3. Cosima Spender, interview with Agnes "Mougouch" Gorky Fielding, in Tate Etc. (Issue 18: Spring 2010), https://www.tate.org.uk/tate-etc/issue-18-spring-2010/my-gorky. 

Related Work
[Drawing, They Will Take My Island]1944 D1097
1944
Graphite pencil and crayon on paper
D1097
Graphite pencil and crayon on paper