Arts Council of Great Britain, London (organizer), Tate Gallery, Arshile Gorky: Paintings and Drawings, April 2–May 2, 1965, no. 58, as "To Protect, To Conjure".

1965 AC–Brussels and Rotterdam

Arts Council of Great Britain, London (organizer), Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Arshile Gorky, Paintings and Drawings / Arshile Gorky: Schilderijen en Tekeningen, May 22–June 27, 1965, no. 71, as "Plannen en gissingen maken / To project, to conjure". Traveled to: Museum Boymans van Beuningen, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, July 24–September 5, 1965.

1975–77 AC–London

Arts Council of Great Britain, London (organizer), Arshile Gorky: Paintings and Drawings, 1975–77, no. 11, as "To Protect, To Conjure". Traveled to: Southampton Art Gallery, United Kingdom, December 12, 1975–February 22, 1976; Graves Art Gallery, Sheffield, United Kingdom, April 3–May 2, 1976; Sunderland Art Gallery, United Kingdom, June 5–August 15, 1976; City Art Gallery, Dundee, United Kingdom, August 21–November 27, 1976; Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, United Kingdom, December 19, 1976–January 16, 1977; Serpentine Gallery, London, March 12–April 11, 1977.

1979b New York

Xavier Fourcade Inc, New York, Arshile Gorky: Important Paintings and Drawings, April 3–28, 1979, ill. in color, as "To Protect, To Conjure".

1981–82 New York

Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, Arshile Gorky 1904–1948: A Retrospective, April 24–July 19, 1981, no. 163, ill. in color, p. 191, as "To Protect, To Conjure". Traveled to: Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, September 12–November 6, 1981; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, December 3, 1981–February 28, 1982.

1994a New York

Gagosian Gallery, New York, Arshile Gorky: Late Paintings, January 11–March 5, 1994, ill. in color, p. 31; p. 42, as "To Protect, To Conjure".

Literature

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 "To Project, To Conjure".

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. 289, ill. in b/w, pp. 445–46, as "To Project, To Conjure".

Lader 1985

Lader, Melvin P. Arshile Gorky. New York: Abbeville Press, 1985. Monograph, fig. 83, ill. in color, p. 84, as "To Protect, To Conjure".

Kimmelman 1994

Kimmelman, Michael. "Arshile Gorky: Late Years of a Tragic Figure." New York Times, February 6, 1994, ill. in b/w, p. 31, as "To Protect, To Conjure".

Tesch and Hollmann 1997

Tesch, Jürgen, and Eckhard Hollmann, eds. Icons of Art: The 20th Century. Munich and New York: Prestel-Verlag, 1997, ill. in color, p. 117, as "To Protect, To Conjure".

Herrera 2003

Herrera, Hayden. Arshile Gorky: His Life and Work. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003, fig. 155, ill. in color, as "To Protect, To Conjure".

Thomas 2003

Thomas, Kelly Devine. "The Most Wanted Works of Art." Artnews (New York) (November 1, 2003), discussed, as "To Protect, To Conjure".

Notes

Commentary

According to the artist's wife, Agnes "Mougouch" Gorky (1921–2013), To Project, To Conjure was a lifetime title, which was decided upon by Gorky and André Breton (1896–1966) through a collaborative process of free association that the two artists jointly devised in the months preceding Gorky's debut solo show at the Julien Levy Gallery in March 1945 (see commentary for P287).¹However, given there is no known extant lifetime documentation confirming its origin, we have designated the title as posthumous, with its spelling in accordance with Jim M. Jordan's catalogue raisonné.²

1. Julien Levy Gallery, New York, Arshile Gorky, March 6–31, 1945.

2. Jim M. Jordan, "Catalogue Raisonné of Paintings," in Jim M. Jordan and Robert Goldwater, The Paintings of Arshile Gorky: A Critical Catalogue (New York and London: New York University Press, 1982), 445–446.

Related Work

(Untitled)

1944

Graphite pencil and crayon on paper

D1117

Graphite pencil and crayon on paper

Record last updated March 30, 2023. Please note that the information on this and all pages is periodically reviewed and subject to change.

Citation: The Arshile Gorky Foundation. "(To Project, To Conjure), 1944, P289." In Arshile Gorky Catalogue Raisonné. https://www.gorkycatalogue.org/catalogue/entry.php?id=2053 (accessed on September 27, 2023).