Abstract Expressionism

Abstract Expressionism

In the years after World War II, a group of New York artists formed the first American movement to exert major influence internationally: abstract expressionism. This term, which had first been used in 1919 in Berlin, was used again in 1946 by Robert Coates in The New York Times, and was taken up by the two major art critics of that time, Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg. It has always been criticized as too large and paradoxical, yet the common definition implies the use of abstract art to express feelings, emotions, what is within the artist, and not what stands without.

The first generation of abstract expressionists was composed of artists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Hans Hofmann, and others. Though the numerous artists encompassed by this label had widely different styles, contemporary critics found several common points between them.

There was an emphasis on spontaneous, automatic or subconscious creation. The movement's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German 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. 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.

Many first generation abstract expressionists were influenced both by the Cubists' works (black & white copies in art reviews and the works themselves at the 291 Gallery or the Armory Show), and by the European Surrealists, most of them abandoned formal composition and representation of real objects; and by Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse. Often the abstract expressionists decided to try instinctual, intuitive, spontaneous arrangements of space, line, shape and color. Abstract Expressionism can be characterized by two major elements - the large size of the canvases used, (partially inspired by Mexican frescoes and the works they made for the WPA- works progress administration- in the 1930s), and the strong and unusual use of brushstrokes and experimental paint application with a new understanding of process.

The emphasis and intensification of color and large open expanses of surface were two of the principles applied to the movement called Color field Painting. Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman were categorized as such painters. Another movement was called Action Painting, characterized by spontaneous reaction, powerful brushstrokes, dripped and splashed paint and the strong physical movements used in the production of a painting. Jackson Pollock is an example of an Action Painter: his creative process, incorporating thrown and dripped paint from a stick or poured directly from the can; he revolutionized painting methods. Willem de Kooning famously said about Pollock, "he broke the ice for the rest of us." Ironically Pollock's large repetitious expanses of linear fields are also characteristic of Color Field painting as well. Despite the disagreements between art critics, Abstract Expressionism marks a turning-point in the history of American art: the 1940s and 1950s saw international attention shift from European -Parisian- art, to American -New York- art.

Color field painting went on as a movement: artists in the 1950s, such as Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, and in the 1960s Helen Frankenthaler, sought to make paintings which would eliminate superfluous rhetoric with large, flat areas of color.

Hans Hoffman – (1880-1966) http://www.pbs.org/hanshofmann/biography_001.html
Playing with Linear perspective- the technique used to create the illusion of space in a painting or drawing- has served as the golden rule for artists since the Italians developed it during the Renaissance. Developing a technique he called “push and pull,” Hofmann proved that the illusion of space, depth, and even movement on a canvas could be created abstractly using color and shape, rather than representational forms.

With “push and pull”, shapes interact to create not only the feeling of space, but of movement as well. Warm colors appear to advance, cool ones seem to recede. Light and dark values and overlapping shapes all help to create the illusion that the composition in is motion, or “breathing”, leading the eye to each part of the picture rather than letting it rest in one spot. In this way, the viewer becomes actively engaged with the picture- a goal Hofmann claimed all artists should strive for. 

Jackson Pollock – (1912-1956) Pollock was the first “all-over” painter, pouring paint rather than using brushes and a palette, and abandoning all conventions of a central motif. He danced in semi-ecstasy over canvases spread across the floor, lost in his patternings, dripping and dribbling with total control. He said: “The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.” He painted no image, just “action”, though “action painting” seems an inadequate term for the finished result of his creative process. Lavender Mist (1950) is nearly 10 ft wide, a vast expanse on a heroic scale. It is alive with colored scribble, spattered lines moving this way and that, now thickening, now trailing off to a slender line. The eye moves energetically, not allowed to rest on any particular area. Pollock has put his hands into paint and placed them at the top right-- an instinctive gesture eerily reminiscent of cave painters who did the same (he was heavily influenced by native American art and sand paintings).

Mark Rothko – (1903-1970) In their manifesto in the New York Times, Rothko and a fellow artist, Gottlieb, had written: "We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth." By 1947 Rothko had virtually eliminated all elements of surrealism or mythic imagery from his works, and nonobjective compositions of indeterminate shapes emerged.

Rothko largely abandoned conventional titles in 1947, sometimes resorting to numbers or colors in order to distinguish one work from another. The artist also now resisted explaining the meaning of his work. "Silence is so accurate," he said, fearing that words would only paralyze the viewer's mind and imagination. http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/

Barnett Newman – (1905-1970) one of the major figures in abstract expressionism and one of the foremost of the color field painters.

Newman proclaimed Onement, I (1948) to be his artistic breakthrough, giving the work an importance belied by its modest size. This is the first time the artist used a vertical band to define the spatial structure of his work. This band, later dubbed a "zip," became Newman's signature mark. The artist applied the light cadmium red zip atop a strip of masking tape with a palette knife. This thick, irregular band on the smooth field of Indian Red simultaneously divides and unites the composition.

Vir Heroicus Sublimis, 1950- The Latin title of this painting can be translated as "Man, heroic and sublime." It refers to Newman’s essay "The Sublime is Now.” Newman hoped that the viewer would stand close to this expansive work, and he likened the experience to a human encounter: "It's no different, really, from meeting another person. One has a reaction to the person physically. Also, there’s a metaphysical thing, and if a meeting of people is meaningful, it affects both their lives." 

 

Franz Kline – (1910-1962) As with Jackson Pollock and other Abstract Expressionists, he was labeled an "action painter" because of his seemingly spontaneous and intense style, focusing less, or not at all, on figures or imagery, but on the actual brush strokes and use of canvas. For most of Kline's [mature and representative] work, however, as the phrase goes, "spontaneity is practiced". He would prepare many draft sketches – notably, commonly on refuse telephone book pages – before going to make his "spontaneous" work. You can also see that his work was inspired by Japanese calligraphy.

Robert Motherwell – (1915-1991) In 1941, after traveling to Mexico with Chilean surrealist Matta Echaurren, Motherwell decided to paint full time and moved to Greenwich Village. During this decade, he was most influenced by European surrealists. Interested in the unconscious mind, Motherwell explored theories of automatism by creating free-association collages that he sometimes used as underpinnings for future painting compositions. Automatism also offered Motherwell “an active principle for painting, specifically designed to explore unknown possibilities.” Experimenting with this technique, Motherwell developed a loose yet vigorous brushwork that resonated with emotion.

Motherwell’s art displayed his passion for history, literature, and the human condition. From the beginning he strove to evoke a moral and political experience through his art. As an example, the artist drew on the writing of James Joyce for titles to his paintings, drawings, and prints throughout his career. A poem by Spanish poet Frederico García Lorca gave him the theme of the Elegy to the Spanish Republic, which Motherwell explored in over 200 works. (http://www.hollistaggart.com/artists/biography/robert_motherwell/)

Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 108 describes a stately passage of the organic and the geometric, the accidental and the deliberate. Like other Abstract Expressionists, Motherwell was attracted to the Surrealist principle of automatism—of methods that escaped the artist's conscious intention—and his brushwork has an emotional charge, but within an overall structure of a certain severity. In fact Motherwell saw careful arrangements of color and form as the heart of abstract art, which, he said, "is stripped bare of other things in order to intensify it, its rhythms, spatial intervals, and color structure."

Motherwell intended his Elegies to the Spanish Republic (over 100 paintings, completed between 1948 and 1967) as a "lamentation or funeral song" after the Spanish Civil War. His recurring motif here is a rough black oval, repeated in varying sizes and degrees of compression and distortion. Instead of appearing as holes leading into a deeper space, these light-absorbent blots stand out against a ground of relatively even, predominantly white upright rectangles. Motherwell described the Elegies as his "private insistence that a terrible death happened that should not be forgot. But," he added, "the pictures are also general metaphors of the contrast between life and death, and their interrelation." http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=79007 

Richard Diebenkorn – (1922-1993) Ocean Park 115 (1979): This painting is one of a series referencing Ocean Park, the beach landscape near Diebenkorn's California studio. Diebenkorn spent two decades developing this series, in which he gradually moved away from his earlier, more directly representational work. In Ocean Park 115 (1979) he evolved a type of abstraction characterized by a geometric division of space, sensuously worked surfaces, and luminous color. Diebenkorn explored new creative avenues in his work while maintaining a clear sense of balance and control. He stated, "My idea was simply to get all the elements right. By that I mean everything: color, form, space, line, composition, what all this might add up to—everything at once."

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In a nutshell: Abstract expressionism: A new way of exploring and interpreting the human experience

“Abstract Expressionists value expression over perfection, vitality over finish, fluctuation over repose, the unknown over the known, the veiled over the clear, the individual over society and the inner over the outer.”
- William C. Seitz,American artist and art historian

Interests:
- The sub-conscious; create artwork that is unplanned, impulsive, even frenzied, to try and get at and explore deepest human impulses and desires (roots in analytic psychology)

- The belief in a universal language; pursuit of a universal visual language
          - May attempt to achieve understanding between viewer and artist on a level that may be called primal, that is, without the help of cultural references, history, or even any reference to ideas or things- in a way, a baby should be able to understand it. Titles and/or color may be eliminated to avoid constraining interpretations- often when presented with abstract art, we look to the title or colors to narrow down the possible interpretations, but when we do this we often cling to meanings that are too shallow or conventional. (Mark Rothko)
          - May use references from literature, history, culture, religion, etc., albeit in highly or completely abstracted form. (Robert Motherwell)

- The act/moment of creation, the record of the artist’s work on the canvas/etc. (Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning)

- Artist as creator, the image as an entity – birthed by the artist (Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Helen Frankenthaler)
          - "A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." – Frankenthaler
          - “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

- Explore the core essence of a medium: Medium specificity is a consideration in aesthetics and art criticism. It is most closely associated with modernism, but it predates it. According to Clement Greenberg, an art critic who helped popularize the term, medium specificity holds that "the unique and proper area of competence" for a form of art corresponds with the ability of an artist to manipulate those features that are "unique to the nature" of a particular medium. For example, in painting, literal flatness and abstraction are emphasized rather than illusionism and figuration. In order to be successful, artwork needs to adhere to the specific stylistic properties of its own medium. (Helen Frankenthaler)

- The simple expression of the complex thought (Mark Rothko).

- Conveying emotions–often through color, energetic (may be misinterpreted as angry) brushwork.

- Life, the meaning of life, death, God, the meaning of it all (Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell)