The Bed (from the Ulysses portfolio) Signed Screenprint Etching Edition of 40, 1998

Robert Motherwell   Master Artists

Artist: Robert Motherwell
Title: The Bed (from The Ulysses Portfolio)
Medium: Screenprint Etching in Color on Johannot Paper
Image Size: 4.375" h x 6" w
Sheet Size: 13" h x 10.125" w
Edition: 27/40
Publisher: Arion Press, San Francisco
Printer: R.E. Townsend, Georgetown, MA
Year: 1988
Inscription: Signed and numbered on front lower right "RM 27/40"
Documentation: Includes Gallery Certificate of Authenticity from Modern Artifact

Robert Motherwell's "The Bed" forms part of the artist's 1988 Ulysses Portfolio, a series of works created in dialogue with James Joyce's seminal modernist novel. The project, published by Arion Press, brought together contemporary artists who responded visually to Joyce's dense and experimental text. Motherwell, long recognized for his engagement with literature and philosophy, contributed this work as a reflection of the novel's capacity to merge the intimate and the monumental.

The composition presents a strikingly minimal field: a saturated rectangle of yellow serves as the ground for a delicate, linear configuration in black. Executed with an economy of means, the line work suggests both abstraction and figuration, evoking forms that oscillate between corporeal presence and gestural notation. This ambiguity is central to Motherwell's visual language, which frequently balanced clarity of form with open-ended interpretation. The title, "The Bed", lends a layer of narrative suggestion, aligning the imagery with themes of intimacy, vulnerability, and the interior spaces of life that Joyce's novel so often explored.

Produced late in the artist's career, "The Bed" underscores Motherwell's continued engagement with printmaking as a vehicle for experimentation. Collaborating with master printer R.E. Townsend, he translated his expressive sensibility into a medium that emphasizes both precision and spontaneity. With its careful balance of color, line, and literary allusion, the piece situates itself within Motherwell's lifelong pursuit of merging visual abstraction with the complexities of human thought and experience.

This impression, numbered 27 of an edition of 40, is signed and inscribed by the artist and is accompanied by a gallery certificate of authenticity from Modern Artifact.

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