An “action” painter, to use Harold Greenberg’s term, Norman Bluhm is generally grouped with other artists painting in the ‘50’s as a “Second Generation” Abstract Expressionist, to distinguish them not only in age but in artistic development from the earlier members of the New York School such as Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko, Motherwell and other “Irascibles.” Yet despite the coining of the term in the early 1950’s principally to describe Pollock’s method, “action” does fit Bluhm work from this period, where his painting might be understood as an active event rather than a mere depiction, suggesting the act of creating art as an outward expression of an inner turmoil or existential journey. The somewhat obscure title of this painting refers to the dormant Mexican volcano Ixtaccíhuatl located within Izta-Popo Zoquiapan National Park. In Tlaxcaltecan mythology, Ixtaccíhuatl was a princess who fell in love with one of her father’s warriors, Popocatépetl. The emperor sent Popocatépetl to war in Oaxaca, promising him Ixtaccíhuatl as his wife when he returned (which Ixtaccíhuatl’s father presumed he would not). Ixtaccihuatl was falsely told that Popocatépetl had died in battle, and believing the news, she died of grief. When Popocatépetl returned to find his love dead, he took her body to a spot outside Tenochtitlan and knelt by her grave. The gods covered them with snow and changed them into mountains. Ixtaccíhuatl’s mountain is called “White Woman” (from Nahuatl iztāc “white” and cihuātl “woman”) because it resembles a woman lying on her back, and is often covered with snow — the peak is sometimes nicknamed La Mujer Dormida, “The Sleeping Woman”. Popocatépetl became an active volcano, raining fire on Earth in blind rage at the loss of his beloved. Now, part of the fun of looking at a work like this is trying to guess what or who in the world the artist had in mind in titling it this way.
