Abstract Expressionism
Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement , developed in New York City in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York at the center of the Western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.
The art style applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. It is often characterised by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of spontaneity. Abstract Expressionism takes from Surrealism and delivers the idea that art should be created by spontaneous and subconscious creation. Rather than planning out, sketching, and rendering a piece, the artist follows the flow of feeling and the openness of his mind to create. |
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Jackson Pollock
Pasiphaë confronts the viewer with a maelstrom of swirling and angular lines and broken forms, all pressed up to the front of the picture plane—an allover effect later seen in Pollock's "drip" canvases. The painter developed this novel interpretation of the Surrealist technique of automatism (which taps the artist’s unconscious to compose the image) by creating dozens of colored drawings. Amid the chaos are barely discernible sentinel-like forms on both sides of a prostrate figure in the center. Pollock originally called this painting Moby Dick, but he retitled it after hearing the story of the Cretan princess Pasiphaë, who gave birth to the half-man, half-bull Minotaur. Throughout World War II, many artists mined classical mythology’s vast repository of tragic tales of war, struggle, and loss.
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Mark Rothko
One of the preeminent artists of his generation, Mark Rothko is closely identified with the New York school, a circle of painters that emerged during the 1940s as a new collective voice in American art. During a career that spanned five decades, he created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting.
Rothko's work is characterized by rigorous attention to formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale; yet, he refused to consider his paintings solely in these terms. He explained: "It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing." |
By 1949 Rothko had introduced a compositional format that he would continue to develop throughout his career. Composed of several vertically aligned rectangular forms set within a colored field, Rothko's "image" lent itself to a remarkable diversity of appearances.
In these works, large scale, open structure, and thin layers of color combine to convey the impression of a shallow pictorial space. Color, for which Rothko's work is perhaps most celebrated, here attains an unprecedented luminosity. |
Willem Da Kooking
If Jackson Pollock was the public face of the New York avant-garde, Willem de Kooning could be described as an artist’s artist, who was perceived by many of his peers as its leader. He was born in Rotterdam, where he grew up in an impoverished household and attended the Rotterdam Academy, training in fine and commercial arts.
In New Jersey, de Kooning found work as a house painter. Large brushes and fluid paints were the tools of this trade, ones that he would continue to utilize throughout his artistic career. His dual foundations in drawing and craftsmanship underlay all of his work, even his most abstract paintings. De Kooning’s next stop was New York, where he forged his artistic career. The Jazz Age was in full swing when he moved to the city, and he quickly fell under the sway of the lyrical freedom of jazz and the abstract art made by other artists under its influence. By the 1940s, de Kooning had gained prominence as an artist. Over the course of a career lasting nearly seven decades, he would work through a wide array of styles, eventually cementing himself as a crucial link from New York School painting to European modernism. Physical labor and countless revisions were constants in his work, which ranged from abstraction to figuration, often merging the two. “I never was interested in how to make a good painting…,” he once said. “I didn’t work on it with the idea of perfection, but to see how far one could go…”1 |
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Helen Frankenthaler
American artist Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) is regarded as one of the most important representatives of abstract expressionism of the twentieth century. As part of the New York School in the 1950s, the painter developed her own method of action painting; influenced by Jackson Pollock; her groundbreaking “soak-stain” paintings were created by pouring thinned paint onto untreated canvas. In these abstract works, the medium of paint appears to merge with the ground, creating fluid and atmospheric effects. Utilizing this technique, Frankenthaler continued to develop her own style that was in turn influential on a movement later known as color field painting. Her paintings are often large-scale and brightly colored, at times featuring dynamic, vigorous brushwork. The artist saw painting on paper as a field of experimentation synonymous with her paintings on canvas. |