ABSTRACT
EXPRESSIONISM
1940s AND 50s
• Abstract Expressionism should not be confused
with the German Expressionist movement that we
studied earlier. The German Expressionists
painted in Europe in the early years of the 20th
century.
• The Abstract Expressionist movement came later,
developing midway through the 20th century, in
the 1940s and 1950s, and originating in the United
States.
Jackson Pollock 1912 - 1956
• Pollock pioneered what came to be
known as Action Painting, as the
technique of dribbling, pouring,
spraying and flinging paint was a
very physical process, involving
the artist’s entire body, rather than
just the arm and wrist.
Pollock seated by his car
By Hans Namuth
Gelatin silver print, 1950
National Portrait Gallery,
Smithsonian Institution,
Washington, DC
• Jackson grew up in Arizona and California. He
was expelled from two different high schools in
his adolescence before moving, with his brother,
to New York in 1930. During his early life, he
experienced Native American culture while on
surveying trips with his father in the American
southwest. He was particularly influenced by the
Indian tradition of sand painting. In New York, he
studied at the Art Students League of New York.
• In an attempt to deal with alcoholism,
Pollock underwent Jungian psychotherapy.
His therapist tried to engage him through
his art and had Pollock make drawings,
which led to the appearance of many
Jungian concepts in his paintings. Recently
it has been hypothesized that Pollock might
have had bipolar disorder (ie manic
depression). (Wikipedia)
• Pollock described his own process:
• My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer
to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or
the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface.
On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more
part of the painting, since this way I can walk
around it, work from the four sides and literally be
in the painting.
• I continue to get further away from the
usual painter's tools such as easel, palette,
brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives
and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto
with sand, broken glass or other foreign
matter added.
• When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what
I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted'
period that I see what I have been about. I have no
fear of making changes, destroying the image,
etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try
to let it come through. It is only when I lose
contact with the painting that the result is a mess.
Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and
take, and the painting comes out well.
Pollock's public image became larger than life,
and his myth began to dominate his art because
of the interaction of many factors, including the
public's fascination with the millions paid for art
that did not, like Rembrandt's or even Monet's
work, look like art to them at all. For Pollock'
technique of pouring paint rather than using a
brush was in and of itself so radical that
Picasso's distortions looked tame by
comparison. (Wikipedia)
• The following photographs of Pollock at
work on a canvas were taken by Hans
Namuth, whose film footage of Pollock
increased the mythic status that the artist
achieved by the 1940s.
• Pollock’s notoriety created plenty of debate
about the value of his work.
"a random mess"? (LIFE's 1949 feature article on Pollock)
"This is not art--it's a joke in bad taste." --Reynolds News headline,
1959
Eyes in the
Heat, 1946
Shimmering Substance, 1946
According to the critic Clement Greenburn, Pollock’s drip paintings
were "the epitome of aesthetic value.
Another critic, John Molyneux, claimed that Pollock’s paintings
“create order out of chaos" and "without obvious patterning . . .
achieve a total symphonic composition” … thus they speak to "the
struggle against alienation, fragmentation, and disintegration" (3)
Cathedral, 1947
Full Fathom Five,
1947
Most
Abstract
Expressionis
ts were male
They
produced a
"virile" and
violent art
Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950
Autumn Rhythm, Number 1 1950
What makes these paintings 'great'? The
major paintings possess two qualities which
relate to both form and content. First, they
create order out of chaos. Without obvious
patterning they achieve a total symphonic
composition and this speaks of the struggle
against alienation, fragmentation and
disintegration. Second these compositions
'signify' at many levels--they convey by
suggestion a multiplicity of 'meanings',
meanings that are social, historical and
political in character.
Let us take Lavender Mist as an example . . . It is suggestive of an aerial
photograph of a city, but it is a city that has somehow been blasted . . . It
is also suggestive of astronomical photographs of nebulae and galaxies . .
. while at the same time close up details of this and other paintings
resemble microscopic photos of molecular structures.
Add to these visual associations that these works were painted in
the aftermath of Hiroshima and at the onset of the Cold War, and
note Pollock's own statement that 'modern art to me is nothing
more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age that
we're living in ... the modern painter cannot express this age, the
airplane, the atom bomb in the old forms of the Renaissance or of
any other past culture. Each age finds its own technique.' Also
recall again that this technique was to drip, flick and throw the
paint onto the canvas from above. Put all this together and I think
the connection between the work and the historical advent of the
threat of nuclear annihilation is clear.
--John Molyneux, “Expression of an Age”
Art and Politics in the Cold War Era
Abstract Expressionism developed during a period known as the Cold
War, following the cessation of active warfare during WWII (19391945). The communist Soviet Union was expanding its influence in
Eastern Europe, much to the dismay of the western democracies. The
world was dividing into countries allied to the Russian Soviets and those
that were ranged against this new superpower. The arms race that
developed between the opponents, as each side raced to develop more
and more powerful and sophisticated nuclear weapons, threatened the
security of the entire planet. The possibility of nuclear annihilation was
a real threat, and one that influenced the work of writers and artists,
Pollock among them.
Mark Rothko and Colour Field
Painting
• Rothko was a Russian born painter who came to
the United States as a child.
• His early work was highly influenced by the
Surrealists, but in the 1950s he began to produce
large canvases without any subject matter, simply
large “fields” of colour that often appeared to
vibrate with great intensity.
• He is grouped with the Abstract Expressionists,
although he resisted this designation.
• Mark Rothko
• White Centre
Mark Rothko - Orange
Willem De Kooning
• The hallmark of de Kooning's style was an
emphasis on complex figure ground
ambiguity. Background figures would
overlap other figures causing them to
appear in the foreground, which in turn
might be overlapped by dripping lines of
paint thus positioning the area into the
background. (Wikipedia)
Willem De Kooning - Woman
• De Kooning painted many variations on the
theme of women, many of them expressing
a menacing sexuality that viewers found
disturbing.
De Kooning – Pink Angels. 1945
De Kooning – Two Trees