The Two Leading Art Critics of Abstract Expressionism Were

The Development of Abstract Expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American, post–Globe War II art movement.

Learning Objectives

Explain the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Abstract expressionism has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic, and nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any number of artists working (by and large) in New York who had quite different styles, and even to work that is neither peculiarly abstruse nor expressionist.
• Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists works, near of these paintings involved careful planning, particularly since their large size demanded information technology.
• Abstruse expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the utilise of large canvases and an all-over approach, in which the whole canvas is treated with equal importance.

Central Terms

• New York School: The New York School (synonymous with abstruse expressionist painting) was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City.

Abstruse Expressionism Overview

Abstract expressionism was an American post–Earth War Two art movement. Although the term abstract expressionism was first practical to American art in 1946 past the art critic Robert Coates, it had been used previously in Deutschland'due south Der Sturm magazine in 1919.

Abstract expressionism is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and cocky-deprival of the German language expressionists with the anti-figurative artful of the European abstract schools, such as futurism, the Bauhaus, and constructed cubism. Additionally, it has an prototype of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic, and nihilistic. In practice, the term is practical to whatever number of artists who worked (mostly) in New York during the 1940s.

Abstruse expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early 20th century, such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is truthful that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists' works, in reality virtually of these paintings involved conscientious planning, especially since their large size demanded it. In many instances, abstract art implied the expression of ideas that business organisation the spiritual, the unconscious, and the mind.

Characteristics of Abstract Expressionist Painting

Abstract expressionism expanded and developed the definitions and possibilities that artists had available in the creation of new works of fine art. Although abstruse expressionism spread apace throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York and California. Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of large canvases and an all-over approach, in which the whole canvas is treated with equal importance (as opposed to the centre being of more interest than the edges).

No. v: Jackson Pollock is known for his techniques in action painting, a way of abstract expressionism in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed, or smeared onto the canvas, rather than existence carefully applied, as seen in this painting done in 1948.

Jackson Pollock'southward energetic action paintings, with their decorated feel, are different both technically and aesthetically from the violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning. In contrast to the emotional energy and gestural surface marks of Pollock and de Kooning, the color-field painters initially appeared to be cool and austere, eschewing the individual mark in favor of big, apartment areas of colour, which these artists considered to exist the essential nature of visual abstraction, along with the actual shape of the canvas. In later years, color-field painting has proven to be both sensual and securely expressive, albeit in a different way from gestural abstract expressionism.

New York

During the catamenia leading up to and during World War II, modernist artists, writers, and poets, too as important collectors and dealers, fled Europe and the onslaught of the Nazis for prophylactic haven in the United states. New York replaced Paris every bit the new heart of the fine art world.

The 1940s in New York Metropolis heralded the triumph of American abstract expressionism—a modernist motility that combined lessons learned from Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Surrealism, Joan Miró, Cubism, Fauvism, and early Modernism via the neat teachers who arrived in America, like Hans Hofmann from Germany and John D. Graham from Russia.

Graham's influence on American art during the early 1940s was peculiarly visible in the work of Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. Gorky'south contributions to American and world art are difficult to overestimate. His works—such as The Liver is the Cock's Comb, The Betrothal 2, and 1 Year the Milkweed—immediately prefigured abstract expressionism.

Jackson Pollock

During the belatedly 1940s, Jackson Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all gimmicky art that followed him. To some extent, Pollock realized that the journey toward making a work of art was as of import as the work of art itself.

Pollock redefined what it was to produce art. His motion abroad from easel painting and conventionality was a liberating bespeak to the artists of his era and to all that came after. Artists realized that Jackson Pollock's process—the placing of unstretched raw canvas on the flooring where information technology could be attacked from all four sides using artist materials and industrial materials—essentially took making art beyond whatever prior purlieus.

Jackson Pollock and Activeness Painting

Activity painting, created by Jackson Pollock, is a style in which pigment is spontaneously splattered, smeared, or dripped onto the canvas.

Learning Objectives

Describe Jackson Pollock's method of activity painting

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Activity painting was developed equally part of the abstruse expressionism movement that took identify in post–Globe War Two America, particularly in New York, during the 1940s through until the early 1960s.
• Action painting places the emphasis on the act of painting rather than the final work as an artistic object.
• Jackson Pollock challenged traditional conventions of painting by using synthetic, resin-based paints, laying his canvas on the floor, and using hardened brushes, sticks, and fifty-fifty basting syringes to apply pigment.

Key Terms

• abstruse: Art that does not draw objects in the natural world, merely instead uses color and grade in a non-representational fashion.
• aesthetic: Concerned with dazzler, artistic bear upon, or appearance.

Action Painting

Activity painting is a way of painting in which pigment is spontaneously dribbled, splashed, or smeared onto the sail, rather than being carefully applied with a brush. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work.

Activity painting is inextricably linked to abstract expressionism, a schoolhouse of painting popular in postal service-World State of war Two America that was characterized by the view that art is non-representational and importantly improvisational. The major artists associated with this movement are Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, and Marking Rothko, among others.

The term action painting was coined by the American art critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 in his essay The American Action Painters, signaling a major shift in the aesthetic perspective of the New York Schoolhouse painters and critics. According to Rosenberg, the canvass was not an object, but rather "an arena in which to act. "

Rosenberg's critique shifted the emphasis from the object to the struggle of painting itself, with the finished work being only the physical manifestation, a kind of residual, of the actual work of art, which was in the process of the painting'south cosmos.

Activity painting refers to the spontaneous activity that was the action of the painter—through arm and wrist movement, painterly gestures— and led to paint that was thrown, splashed, stained, splattered, poured, and dripped. The painter would sometimes let the paint drip onto the canvas while rhythmically dancing or even while standing on top of the unstretched canvas laying on the floor—both techniques invented past one of the most important abstract expressionists: Jackson Pollock.

Jackson Pollock

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 difficult surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this mode I can walk around it, work from the iv sides, and literally be in the painting.

Born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912, Jackson Pollock moved to New York City in 1930, where he studied under Thomas Hart Benton at the Art Students League of New York. In 1948 he married the American painter Lee Krasner, and they moved to what is now known every bit the Pollock-Krasner House and Studio in the Springs surface area of East Hampton, Long Island, NY.

The Pollock Barn: Pollock's studio in Springs, New York.

Materials and Process

Later on his motility to Springs, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio floor, turning to constructed, resin-based paints chosen alkyd enamels. These were much more than fluid than traditional pigment and, at that time, were a novel medium. Pollock described his use of household paints, instead of fine art paints, as "a natural growth out of a need."

He used hardened brushes, sticks, and fifty-fifty basting syringes equally paint applicators. By defying the convention of painting on an upright surface, he added a new dimension by being able to view and apply paint to his canvases from all directions—the term all-over painting has been used to describe some of his work, besides equally the work of other artists from that time.

In the process of making paintings in this way, he moved away from figurative representation, and challenged the Western tradition of using easel and brush. In add-on, he likewise moved abroad from the employ of only the hand and wrist, since he used his whole body to pigment.

Jackson Pollock in his studio: The artist threw, splashed, stained, splattered, poured, and dripped paint to create his works.

Titles with Numbers

Pollock wanted an terminate to the search for figurative elements in his paintings, and so he abandoned titles and started numbering his paintings instead. The numbering relates to the fashion composers title their works. Furthering the musical metaphor, Pollock's action paintings have been often described as improvisational works of art, like to how jazz musicians arroyo the operation of a slice.

Death

At the pinnacle of his fame, Pollock abruptly abandoned the drip style and by 1951 his works had turned darker in color. This was followed by a return to color, and he reintroduced figurative elements. During this period Pollock moved to a more commercial gallery and there was great demand from collectors for his new paintings.

In response to this pressure level, along with personal frustration, his long-term trouble with alcoholism worsened. He painted his two last works in 1955. On Baronial 11, 1956, Pollock died in a single-car crash in his Oldsmobile convertible while driving under the influence of alcohol.

Later Pollock'south demise at age 44, his widow, Lee Krasner, managed his estate and ensured that Pollock'due south reputation remained strong despite changing art-globe trends. They are both buried in Greenish River Cemetery in Springs, Long Island, NY.

Color-Field Painting

Color-field painting can exist recognized by its large fields of solid color spread beyond or stained into the canvas to create areas of unbroken surface and a apartment moving picture plane.

Learning Objectives

Differentiate color-field painting from other contemporary abstruse art such as abstruse expressionism

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Color-field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s. It is closely linked to abstract expressionism, post-painterly abstraction, and lyrical abstraction.
• Distinct from the emotional free energy and gestural surface marks and paint handling seen in the work of abstract expressionists similar Jackson Pollock, color-field painting came across as cool and austere.
• The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action in favor of an overall consistency of class and procedure, with color itself becoming the subject matter.
• Marker Rothko, Frank Stella, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Morris Louis are among the many artists who used color-field techniques in their piece of work.
• Color-field painters revolutionized the way paint could be effectively applied, through their use of acrylic paint and techniques such as staining and spraying.

Cardinal Terms

• abstract expressionism: An American genre of modern art that used improvised techniques to generate highly abstruse forms.
• action painting: A genre of modern art in which the pigment is dribbled, splashed, or poured onto the canvas to obtain a spontaneous and totally abstract epitome.
• lyrical abstraction: A blazon of abstract painting related to abstract expressionism; in utilise since the 1940s.

Color-Field Painting

Colour-field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s. Inspired by European modernism and closely related to abstract expressionism, many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering abstract expressionists.

Color-field is characterized primarily by its utilize of big fields of apartment, solid colour spread across or stained into the sheet to create areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture aeroplane. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action than abstract expressionism, favoring instead an overall consistency of grade and process, with color itself condign the subject thing.

Encompassing several decades from the mid-20th century through the early 21st century, the history of  colour-field painting tin can be separated into three separate but related generations of painters:

1. Abstruse expressionism.
2. Post-painterly abstraction.
3. Lyrical brainchild.

Some of the artists made works in all three eras that relate to all of the three styles.

Clement Greenberg

The focus of attention in the contemporary fine art globe began to shift from Paris to New York afterwards Globe War II and the development of American Abstract Expressionism. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Clement Greenberg was the first art critic to suggest and place a dichotomy between differing tendencies inside the abstract expressionist canon—particularly between action painting and what Greenberg termed post-painterly abstraction (today known as color-field).

Color-Field Formats

Past the late 1950s and early on 1960s, young artists began to break abroad stylistically from abstruse expressionism, experimenting with new means of handling pigment and color. Moving away from the gesture and angst of action painting towards flat, articulate picture planes and a seemingly calmer language, color-field artists used formats of stripes, targets, and uncomplicated geometric patterns to concentrate on color as the dominant theme their paintings.

Color-field painting initially referred to a item blazon of abstract expressionism, exemplified specially in the work of Marker Rothko, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb and several series of paintings by Joan Miró.

Color-field painting sought to rid art of superfluous rhetoric and gesture. Artists similar Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Friedel Dzubas, and Frank Stella often used greatly reduced formats, simplified or regulated systems, and bones references to nature to depict the focus of the painting to color, and the interactions of color, as the most of import element.

Harran 2: During the belatedly 1950s and early 1960s, Frank Stella was a pregnant figure in the emergence of minimalism, postal service-painterly brainchild, and colour-field painting. His shaped canvases of the 1960s revolutionized abstract painting, such as this one from 1967.

Beginning: This color-field painting is characterized by unproblematic geometric forms and repetitive, regulated systems. It was painted by Kenneth Noland in 1958.

Who'southward Agape of Red, Xanthous and Blueish?: The flat, solid picture plane that is typical of colour-field paintings is evident in this 1966 piece by Barnet Newman, where the colour carmine takes centre stage.

An of import distinction between color-field painting and abstract expressionism is the style pigment is handled. The most bones defining technique of painting is the application of pigment, and the colour-field painters revolutionized the way pigment could be finer applied.

Water-soluble, artist-quality acrylic paints first became commercially bachelor in the early 1960s, congruent with the color-field motion. The most mutual applications were:

• Stain painting, where artists mix and dilute their paint in buckets or coffee cans to make it a more than fluid liquid, and so pour it onto raw, unprimed canvas and draw shapes and areas every bit they stain.
• Spray painting, a technique using a spray gun to create large expanses and fields of color sprayed beyond the canvas.
• The apply of stripes.

Color-field painting initially appeared to be cool and austere due to these methods of handling pigment that tended to eschew the individual mark of the artist. However, colour-field painting has proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive, albeit in a different mode from gestural abstruse expressionism.

Big A: Jack Bush-league was a color-field painter who used geometric, simple forms to highlight the pure interaction of colour, as can be seen in this 1968 piece of work.

The New York School

The New York School was an informal group of American abstruse painters and other artists that was active in the 1950s and 1960s.

Learning Objectives

Explain what the New York School is known for and who its proponents were

Cardinal Takeaways

Primal Points

• The New York Schoolhouse was an breezy group of abstract painters and other artists in NYC though information technology has become associated most with the abstract expressionist move. Although abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the U.s., the major centers of this fashion were New York Urban center and California.
• New York School artists drew inspiration from surrealism and gimmicky art movements such every bit action painting, abstract expressionism, jazz, improvisational theater, and experimental music.
• The piece of work of the New York School was documented through annual exhibitions of painting and sculpture from 1951–1957, most notably in the 9th Street Art Exhibition.
• In addition to painting, the New York School was associated with many poets, dancers, composers, jazz musicians, and writers.

Key Terms

• surrealism: An artistic move and an aesthetic philosophy, pre-dating abstract expressionism, that aims for the liberation of the listen by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the hidden.
• GI Neb: The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, known informally as the GI Pecker, was a law that provided a range of benefits for returning World War II veterans (normally referred to every bit GIs).
• abstract expressionism: An American genre of modern art that used improvised techniques to generate highly abstract forms.

The New York Schoolhouse

The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians that was active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City. It represented, and is often synonymous with, the art movement of aAbstract expressionism, such as the work of Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning.

The artists of the New York School drew their inspiration from surrealism and other gimmicky, avant-garde art movements, in particular activity painting, abstract expressionism, jazz, improvisational theater, experimental music, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art earth'due south vanguard circle.

No. 5: Jackson Pollack is known for his techniques in action painting, a fashion of abstract expressionism in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than carefully practical, such every bit this one done in 1948.

Woman 5: Willem de Koonig was an influential abstract expressionist painter.

Abstract Expressionism

A school of painting that flourished subsequently World War II until the early 1960s, abstruse expressionism is characterized by the view that fine art is non-representational and importantly improvisational. Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the apply of big canvases, and an all-over approach whereby the whole canvas is treated with equal importance (equally opposed to the center beingness of more interest than the edges). The canvas equally the arena became a ideology of activeness painting, while the integrity of the motion-picture show airplane became a ideology of the colour-field painters.

The mail service-Earth War Ii era benefited some of the artists who were recognized early on past art critics. Some artists from New York, such as Norman Bluhm and Sam Francis, took advantage of the GI Bill and left for Europe, to return afterward with acclaim.

Many artists from all across the U.S. arrived in New York City to seek recognition, and by the end of the decade the list of artists associated with the New York Schoolhouse had greatly increased. Painters, sculptors, and printmakers created art that was termed action painting, fluxus, colour-field painting, difficult-edge painting, pop art, minimal fine art and lyrical abstraction, amid other styles and movements associated with abstract expressionism.

9th Street Art Exhibition

The 9th Street Art Exhibition was held on May 21–June 10, 1951. It was a historical, basis-breaking exhibition that gathered a number of notable artists, and it was the stepping-out of the mail-war New York advanced, collectively known as the New York School.

The show was hung by Leo Castelli, as he was liked past well-nigh of the artists and thought of every bit someone who would hang the exhibition without favoritism. The opening of the show was a great success. According to the critic, historian, and curator Bruce Altshuler, "It appeared equally though a line had been crossed, a step into a larger art globe whose future was vivid with possibility."

Interdisciplinary Influences in the New York School

In improver to painting, the New York School was associated with many poets, dancers, composers, jazz musicians, and writers. Poets drew on inspiration from surrealism and the contemporary advanced art movements, in particular the action painting of their friends in the New York Metropolis art world like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

In the 1960s, the piece of work of the avant-garde minimalist composers La Monte Young, Philip Glass, Tony Conrad, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley became prominent in the New York art world. The new bebop and cool jazz musicians in the 1940s and 1950s (such equally Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Gerry Mulligan) coincided with the New York School and abstract expressionism.

There are also commonalities amidst the New York School and members of the shell-generation poets who were agile in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in New York Metropolis, including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Diane Wakoski, and several others.

Abstract Expressionist Sculpture

During the postwar catamenia, many sculptors made work in the prevalent styles of the time: abstract expressionism, minimalism and pop art.

Learning Objectives

Evaluate how sculpture from 1945–1970 was influenced past abstract expressionism, minimalism, and pop fine art

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Abstract expressionist sculpture was greatly influenced by surrealism and its emphasis on spontaneous or subconscious creation.
• Minimalist sculptures oftentimes set out to expose the essence or identity of a subject through the emptying of all not-essential forms or concepts. These works are frequently characterized by geometric, cubic forms, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, and the utilise of industrial materials.
• The sculptors Claes Oldenburg and George Segal were important proponents of pop art in their use of found-objects and how they reproduced everyday commercial objects as fine art.

Key Terms

• pop art: An art motion that emerged in the 1950s, that presented a challenge to traditions of fine art past including imagery from popular culture such equally advert, news, etc.
• found object: A natural object, or ane manufactured for some other purpose, considered as role of a work of art.

Abstract Expressionism and Sculpture

While Abstract Expressionism is nigh closely associated with painting, a number of sculptors were integral to the motility also. David Smith, Dorothy Dehner, Herbert Ferber, Isamu Noguchi, Ibram Lassaw, Theodore Roszak, Phillip Pavia, Mary Callery, Richard Stankiewicz, Louise Conservative, and Louise Nevelson in particular were considered to exist important members of the movement.

Like to abstract expressionist painting, sculptural piece of work from the movement was greatly influenced by surrealism and its emphasis on spontaneous or subconscious creation. Abstract expressionist sculpture, like painting from the movement, was more than interested in process than product, which can get in hard to visually distinguish works by aesthetics alone, so it is important to accept into account what the artist has to say about their process.

The sculptures of David Smith, for example, sought to express ii-dimensional subjects that had never before been shown in three dimensions. His work blurred the distinctions between sculpture and painting, more often than not making utilise of delicate tracery rather than solid class, with a ii-dimensional advent that contradicted the traditional idea of sculpture in the circular.

Aboriginal Household: David Smith was an important abstract expressionist sculptor.

Minimalism

Minimalism during the 1960s and 1970s was a reaction against the painterly subjectivity of abstruse expressionism that dominated the previous decades. Minimalist artists explicitly stated that their art was not about self-expression. Instead, Minimalist works oftentimes prepare out to expose the essence or identity of a subject through the elimination of all non-essential forms or concepts.

These works are often characterized by geometric, cubic forms, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, and the use of industrial materials. Some prominent artists who worked with sculpture and were associated with minimalism (though not all agreed with the association) include Donald Judd, John McCracken, Anthony Caro, Tony Smith, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, and Dan Flavin.

Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin was an American minimalist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures. The lack of the mark of the artist's hand in these cases speak to the notion of exposing the true grade of the sculptural object, a significant tenet of the minimalist movement.

Donald Judd

Donald Judd, who disavowed the term minimalism, and preferred to refer to his sculptures as specific objects, used simple, repeated forms to explore infinite. His works were oft made (rather than sculpted) out of metals, industrial plywood and concrete, and therefore defied easy classification as sculpture.

Judd'south "Untitled," 1977, applies the simplicity and geometric form typical of minimalist works. Fabricated from physical, the slice comes across as potentially industrially created as it lacks the mark of the creative person's manus that is and then frequently seen in works of art, favoring instead a cool austerity that highlights the qualities of the form and the cloth used to fabricate it.

Untitled: Donald Judd, who disavowed the term minimalism, preferred to refer to his sculptures as specific objects. Judd uses uncomplicated, repeated forms to explore space.

Pop Fine art

There were numerous artists working in sculpture who were associated with the pop art movement. Two important examples are Claes Oldenburg and George Segal.

Claes Oldenburg

Oldenburg began his artistic practise equally office of a grouping of artists reacting to Abstract Expressionism'southward sublime gestures with figural drawings and papier mache sculptures. His creative trajectory took him from making found-object paintings littered with urban droppings to plaster sculptures of everyday commercial and manufactured objects. He subsequently created sculptures of similar subjects on larger and larger scales, kickoff sewing soft sculptures out of sheet, then turning to large outdoor monuments in public spaces.

George Segal

George Segal, another creative person associated with the pop-art movement, was all-time known for his life-size figures fabricated from plaster and bandage casts. These figures, often left with minimal color and detail and given a ghostly, hollow appearance, inhabited tableaux synthetic of constitute objects such as a street corner, a bus, or a diner.

Common practices seen in pop-fine art sculptural work include the brandish of found art objects, the representation of consumer goods, the placing of typical not-fine art objects within a gallery setting, and the abstraction of familiar objects. We can see this abstraction in such works as Plug by Oldenburg.

This reproduction of a familiar or mundane object is displayed at such an increased size that the subject area matter becomes abstracted, its original function simultaneously altered and highlighted.

Plug: Claes Oldenburg produced oversized reproductions of familiar objects in increased sizes to abstract the bailiwick thing, such every bit this ane washed in 1970.

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