Abstract Expressionism art(Martin)

8/8/2019 Abstract Expressionism art(Martin)

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Abstract expressionism was an specifically American post-World War II art movement. It was the

first American movement to achieve worldwide influence and also the one that put New York City

at the center of the art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.

After WWII, with images of the Holocaust everywhere, it seemed redundant for socially-aware

artists to paint these same images ... a photograph at the time was much more powerful. Artists

began to explore color and shape and to paint an entire canvas orange or blue.

These works were produced in an extremely specific geographical setting and revealed a specific

attitude. It was the result of the rivalry and dialogue between young American artists and the

large community of European artists living in exile in New York. Additionally, it has an image of

being rebellious, anarchic, and highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, rather nihilistic. It is seen as

combining the emotional intensity and self-expression of the German Expressionists with the anti-

figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, the Bauhaus and Synthetic

Cubism. The movement describe formal trend in American abstraction at the time. It can be

broadly divided into two groups: Action Painting and Color Field and Hard-Edge Painting. It has itsnon-American parallels with similar aims (Art Informel, Cobra, Lyrical Abstraction).

By the 1960s, the movement had lost most of its impact, and was no longer so influential.

Movements which were direct responses to, and rebellions against, abstract expressionism had

begun, such as pop art and minimalism. However, many painters who had produced abstract

expressionist work continued to work in that style for many years afterwards.

(Late 1940's - early 1960's)


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Action Painters:

Jackson Pollock

Willem de-Kooning

Franz Kline

Color Field and Hard-Edge Painters:

Helen Frankenthaler

Barnett NewmanMark

RothkoEllsworh

KellyMorris

LouisAgnes

MartinKenneth

NolandJules Olitski


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Technically, an important predecessor is surrealism, with its emphasis on

spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock's dripping paint onto a canvas laid on

the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of Andr Masson, Max Ernst and David Alfaro

Siqueiros. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of

American Northwest artist Mark Tobey, especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not

large in scale, anticipate the "all-over" look of Pollock's drip paintings.

The movement's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of theGerman Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism,

the Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly

idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic.[2] In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working

(mostly) in New York who had quite different styles and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor

expressionist. Pollock's energetic "action paintings", with their "busy" feel, are different, both technically

and aesthetically, from the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning's figurative

paintings) and the rectangles of color in Mark Rothko's Color Field paintings (which are not what would

usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied were abstract). Yet all three artists are classified as

abstract expressionists.

Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early twentieth century

such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity

characterized many of the abstract expressionists works, most of these paintings involved careful planning,

especially since their large size demanded it. With artists like Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Emma Kunz, and

later on Rothko, Barnett Newman, John McLaughlin, and Agnes Martin, abstract art clearly implied

expression of ideas concerning the spiritual, the unconscious and the mind.


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Action Painting(late 1940's - late 1950's)

One of the significant streams of Abstract Expressionism is the Action

Painting. The term "Action Painting" was used for the first time in 1952 to

describe the works of painters such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem

de Kooning. The life energy and the psyche of the painter were at once the

driving force, the resource and the meaning of these works. The canvas was

seen as an arena. Painting became an irrational, instinctive and impulsive

moment of existence. The Action Painting work thus turned into the form and

trace of the living body, conveying split-second action and motion.


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(January 28, 1912 August 11, 1956)

was an influential American painter and a major figure in the

abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock

enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a

mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality,

sometimes struggling with alcoholism. In 1945, he married the

artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his

career and on his legacy.Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related car accident.

In December 1956, he was given a memorial retrospective

exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York

City, and a larger more comprehensive exhibition there in 1967.

More recently, in 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with

large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate

in London.


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, 1950 in the National Gallery of Art.


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By :

Jackson Pollock,

oil on fiberboard,

244 x 122 cm.

(96 x 48 in.),

private collection.


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By : Jason Pollock


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(4 January 1896 28 October 1987)

was a French artist.

Pedestal Table in the Studio

Automatic drawing


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(April 24, 1904 March 19, 1997)

was a Dutch American abstract expressionist artist who

was born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

In the post-World War II era, de Kooning painted in a style that

came to be referred to as Abstract expressionism or Action painting,

and was part of a group of artists that came to be known as the

New York School. Other painters in this group included Jackson

Pollock, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann,

Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston and Clyfford

Still.


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Willem de Kooning

1952-53Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)


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Color Field and Hard-Edge Painting (early 1960's)

Another significant stream of Abstract Expressionism is the Color Field and Hard-Edge

Painting. The terms Color Field and Hard Edge describe two formal trends in American

abstraction in the early 1960's. Color Field works consist of large colored areas; neither

signs nor forms existed for the eye to latch on to. Color was used without any perspectivedevice, producing a sensation of impressive size. The shades of color were usually diluted

so as to sink into the canvas.

The expression Hard Edge appeared in the late 1950's to describe geometric abstract

works, which emphasized colorful atmospheres and imprecise shapes. Hard Edge works

were typified by their clearly defined outlines and edges and the precision and clarity of

the compositions.


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(born December 12, 1928)

is an American abstract expressionist painter. She is a major contributor to

the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work in six

decades she has spanned several generations of abstract painters while

continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. [1] She began

exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary

museums and galleries in the early 1950s. She was included in the

1964 Post-Painterly Abstr action exhibition curated by Clement

Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that

came to be known as Color Field. Born in New York City, she was influenced

by Hans Hofmann, Jackson Pollock's paintings and by Clement Greenberg.

Her work has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions; including

a 1989 retrospective at theMuseum of Modern Art in New York City. Herwork has been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s. In 2001, she was

awarded theNational Medal of Arts


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by Helen Frankenthaler


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(January 29, 1905 July 4, 1970) was an American

artist. He is seen as one of the major figures in abstract

expressionism and one of the foremost of the color

field painters.

Onement 1,1948

Who's

Afraid of

Red,

Yellow

and

Blue?1966,


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Gorky was born in the village of Khorgom, situated on the shores of Lake Van. It is not known exactly when he was

born: it was sometime between 1902 and 1905. (In later years Gorky was vague about even the date of his birth, changing it from

year to year.) In 1910 his father emigrated to America to avoid the draft, leaving his family behind in the town of Van.

Gorky fled Lake Van in 1915 during the Armenian Genocide and escaped with his mother and his three sisters into Russian-controlled territory. In the aftermath of the genocide, Gorky's mother died of starvation in Yerevan in 1919. Gorky was reunited

with his father when he arrived in America in 1920, aged 16, but they never grew close. At age 31, Gorky married. He changed his

name to Arshile Gorky, in the process reinventing his identity (he even told people he was a relative of the Russian writer Maxim

Gorky). The paintings of Armenian-American Arshile Gorky, a seminal figure of Abstract Expressionism, were often speculated to

have been informed by the suffering and loss of the period.[2] His The Artist and His Mother paintings are based on a childhood

photograph taken in Van in which he is depicted standing beside his mother.


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Gorky's contributions to American and world art are difficult to overestimate. His work as lyrical abstraction was a "new

language. He "lit the way for two generations of American artists". The painterly spontaneity of mature works like "The Liver

is the Cock's Comb". "The Betrothal II", and "One Year the Milkweed" immediately prefigured Abstract expressionism, and

leaders in the New York School have acknowledged Gorky's considerable influence.

But his oeuvre is a phenomenal achievement in its own right, synthesizing Surrealism and the sensuous color andpainterliness of the School of Paris with his own highly personal formal vocabulary. His paintings and drawings hang in every

major American museum including the National Gallery of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the

Metropolitan and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York (which maintains the Gorky Archive), and in many

worldwide, including the Tate in London.


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The Art

ist

and H

is Mot

her

(ca. 1926-1936) by Arshile Gorky.

The painting is based on a photograph of a young Gorky and his mother taken in the short-lived first republic of

Armenia. His mother died of starvation in Yerevan in 1919 when Gorky was 15, only 4 years after Gorky along with

his mother and four sisters had escaped the Armenian Genocide from Van


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PortraitofMaster Bill,by Arshile Gorky Date: 1929-36 Oil on canvas


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The Liver is the Cock's Comb (1944),By Arshile Gorky. oil on canvas

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