Robert Motherwell’s Illustrated Ulysses

The act of reading is a collaboration between author and reader across the span of time. If we take this responsibility seriously, we might jot comments in the margins, offer a laugh, squint and cock our head in disagreement, or otherwise identify with the humanity conveyed in the book’s printed words. But sometimes a reader, such as Robert Motherwell, possesses a particular talent to collaborate with a favorite author, such as James Joyce, in creating a new work of art for future readers to explore, learn from, and be stimulated by.

James Joyce’s Ulysses, well known as a hefty tome, is enlarged and enhanced in the Arion Press’s massive 1988 edition featuring etchings by the Abstract Expressionist artist Robert Motherwell. Motherwell’s illustrations complement Joyce’s novel with appropriate ambiguity while also faithfully representing subtleties in the text, revealing the artist’s lifelong obsession with Ulysses.

Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) was a member of the New York School, and his paintings and prints explored the emotive possibilities of raw gestures. Elements that recur in Motherwell’s work—triangles interacting with ovals, vertical strokes that finish with a shorter diagonal slope downward, conjoined angular peaks—offer associations and sensations while eluding a singular, fixed interpretation. Just like Ulysses.

Motherwell’s interest in Joyce began when he was twenty years old on a European tour with his father. Late on his first night in Paris, Motherwell purchased a copy of Ulysses from an outdoor bookstall and was absorbed into the novel for the rest of the trip. He paid little attention to Europe’s architecture, cuisine, or landscape, prompting his father finally to ask, “What’s that damned book your reading?” The young man murmured his reply, “I have a feeling it’s a masterpiece.”

Although the Arion Press’s illustrated edition of Ulysses was limited to only 150 copies printed to be sold, Motherwell conceived of it as a book to be read. In his mind, the massive size of the book was a benefit rather than a burden (which is saying something for a book that weighs 16 pounds). Motherwell explained,

“To me the most important thing, which has nothing to do with my etchings, is that there be a readable volume of Joyce. The typeface is faultless. And it is a large type on a large page. To ponder over Joyce you need a larger type! You need to be able to pause over each word. I have a sense of how the prints will look opposite the beautiful typeface.”

The edition’s beautiful Perpetua type was set by hand and printed on a Miller cylinder press at Arion Press in San Francisco. This large type pops off the substantial French mould-made Jahannot paper used in the edition.

Motherwell kept copies of Ulysses scattered all over his home and in his studios, frequently dipping into the novel to read a dozen or so pages at random. “Joyce is permanently on my mind,” he remarked. Inspired and influenced by Joyce’s innovative form of interior monologue, Motherwell shaped subconscious impulses into refined works of art, relying on techniques of Surrealist automatism to suggest hidden figures in his markings. 

In his Ulysses etchings, Motherwell responds both to the content and the spirit of Joyce’s novel, balancing figuration with abstraction and allowing the reader to discover connections between the image and the text. For example, Motherwell’s illustration of the “Scylla and Charybdis” episode of Ulysses presents three distinct figures, and the reader might identify them with characters or ideas from the text. What do you see in the image above? Perhaps the figure on the left strikes a contemplative pose, like an abstraction of Rodin’s “The Thinker.” The reader could identify with this quizzical figure while puzzling over this dense chapter, in which the 22-year-old protagonist, Stephen Dedalus, eruditely theorizes about Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In short, Stephen “proves by algebra that Hamlet’s grandson is Shakespeare’s grandfather and that he himself is the ghost of his own father.” Like the figure in Motherwell’s etching, the “Scylla and Charybdis” chapter is a head-scratcher.

But that’s just one reading of one of the forty etchings Motherwell made for this illustrated edition of Ulysses. Motherwell encouraged all readers to make their own meaning out of Joyce’s notoriously tricky text and the abstract illustrations that accompany it. 

In terms of artistic technique, Motherwell made these etchings in a multi-step process that begins with a plate of copper covered with wax or varnish. The artist uses a sharp tool to scrape away the wax in the shape of the desired image, and then the plate is dipped into acid. The acid burns into the copper where Motherwell carved away the wax, creating a smooth groove in the metal plate. The printmaker applies ink into those grooves, a piece of paper is laid on top of the copperplate, and then an intaglio press’s tremendous pressure releases the ink from the grooves onto the paper.  

Taken together, these elements—the thick paper, the large type, and Motherwell’s imaginative etchings—serve to prioritize the reader’s experience, inspiring a fresh opportunity for the reader to collaborate alongside Motherwell and Joyce in seeing Ulysses anew.

Sources and Further Reading:

Ashton, D. (Ed.) (1989). Robert Motherwell. Arnoldo Mondadori Editore Arte.

Joyce, J. (1966). Letters of James Joyce, Vol. 1 (R. Ellmann, Ed.), Viking.

Joyce, J. (1988). Ulysses (R. Motherwell, Illus.). Arion Press.

Mattison, R. S. (1981). “Two Decades of Graphic Art by Robert Motherwell.” The Print Collector’s Newsletter, vol. 11 (no. 6), 197–201.

Motherwell, R. (1992). The Collected Writings of Robert Motherwell (S. Terenzio, Ed.), Oxford University Press.

Motherwell, R. (1979). Robert Motherwell: Prints 1977-1979. Brooke Alexander, Inc.

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