During the 1940s and 50s What New Style of Art Was Jackson Pollock Closely Associated With?
The Development of Abstract Expressionism
Abstruse expressionism was an American, mail–Globe War II art movement.
Learning Objectives
Explicate 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 practise, 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 peculiarly abstract nor expressionist.
- Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstruse expressionists works, virtually of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it.
- Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of big canvases and an all-over arroyo, in which the whole canvas is treated with equal importance.
Key Terms
- New York School: The New York Schoolhouse (synonymous with abstruse expressionist painting) was an informal grouping 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 II fine art movement. Although the term abstruse expressionism was showtime applied to American fine art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates, it had been used previously in Federal republic of germany'southward Der Sturm magazine in 1919.
Abstract expressionism is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German language expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools, such every bit futurism, the Bauhaus, and constructed cubism. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic, and nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to whatsoever number of artists who worked (mostly) in New York during the 1940s.
Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early 20th century, such as Wassily Kandinsky. Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists' works, in reality most of these paintings involved conscientious planning, specially since their large size demanded it. In many instances, abstract fine art implied the expression of ideas that business concern the spiritual, the unconscious, and the listen.
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 art. Although abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this manner were New York and California. Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of large canvases and an all-over arroyo, in which the whole canvas is treated with equal importance (as opposed to the center being of more interest than the edges).
Jackson Pollock'southward energetic action paintings, with their busy feel, are unlike both technically and aesthetically from the violent and grotesque Women serial 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 ascetic, eschewing the private mark in favor of big, flat areas of color, which these artists considered to be the essential nature of visual abstraction, along with the bodily shape of the canvass. In later years, color-field painting has proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive, albeit in a different manner from gestural abstract expressionism.
New York
During the flow leading up to and during World War 2, modernist artists, writers, and poets, equally well equally important collectors and dealers, fled Europe and the onslaught of the Nazis for rubber haven in the United States. New York replaced Paris as the new middle of the art globe.
The 1940s in New York City heralded the triumph of American abstruse expressionism—a modernist movement that combined lessons learned from Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Surrealism, Joan Miró, Cubism, Fauvism, and early Modernism via the great teachers who arrived in America, similar Hans Hofmann from Germany and John D. Graham from Russia.
Graham's influence on American art during the early 1940s was particularly visible in the work of Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. Gorky's 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 One Year the Milkweed—immediately prefigured abstract expressionism.
Jackson Pollock
During the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all contemporary fine art that followed him. To some extent, Pollock realized that the journey toward making a piece of work of art was equally important equally the work of fine art itself.
Pollock redefined what it was to produce art. His move away from easel painting and conventionality was a liberating signal to the artists of his era and to all that came subsequently. Artists realized that Jackson Pollock's process—the placing of unstretched raw canvas on the floor where it could be attacked from all four sides using artist materials and industrial materials—essentially took making fine art across whatsoever prior boundary.
Jackson Pollock and Action Painting
Action painting, created by Jackson Pollock, is a style in which pigment is spontaneously splattered, smeared, or dripped onto the sheet.
Learning Objectives
Describe Jackson Pollock's method of action painting
Primal Takeaways
Key Points
- Action painting was developed as office of the abstract expressionism move that took place in postal service–World War Two America, especially in New York, during the 1940s through until the early on 1960s.
- Action painting places the accent on the act of painting rather than the final work every bit an artistic object.
- Jackson Pollock challenged traditional conventions of painting by using constructed, resin-based paints, laying his canvas on the flooring, and using hardened brushes, sticks, and even basting syringes to apply pigment.
Key Terms
- abstract: Fine art that does not draw objects in the natural world, but instead uses colour and grade in a not-representational style.
- aesthetic: Concerned with beauty, artistic impact, or appearance.
Activeness Painting
Action painting is a manner of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed, or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being advisedly applied with a castor. The resulting work oft emphasizes the physical human activity of painting itself every bit an essential aspect of the finished work.
Action painting is inextricably linked to abstruse expressionism, a school of painting pop in mail service-World War Ii America that was characterized by the view that fine art is non-representational and chiefly improvisational. The major artists associated with this movement are Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko, amidst others.
The term action painting was coined by the American art critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 in his essay The American Activity Painters, signaling a major shift in the aesthetic perspective of the New York School painters and critics. Co-ordinate to Rosenberg, the canvas was not an object, only rather "an arena in which to act. "
Rosenberg'south critique shifted the emphasis from the object to the struggle of painting itself, with the finished work being simply the physical manifestation, a kind of rest, of the actual work of art, which was in the process of the painting'southward cosmos.
Action painting refers to the spontaneous activity that was the activity of the painter—through arm and wrist motion, painterly gestures— and led to paint that was thrown, splashed, stained, splattered, poured, and dripped. The painter would sometimes let the paint baste onto the canvas while rhythmically dancing or fifty-fifty while standing on peak of the unstretched canvas laying on the flooring—both techniques invented past 1 of the most important abstruse 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 hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more function of the painting, since this mode I can walk around it, work from the four sides, and literally exist in the painting.
Built-in 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 at present known as the Pollock-Krasner House and Studio in the Springs area of Eastward Hampton, Long Island, NY.
Materials and Process
Afterwards his motility to Springs, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio flooring, turning to synthetic, resin-based paints called alkyd enamels. These were much more fluid than traditional paint and, at that time, were a novel medium. Pollock described his employ of household paints, instead of fine art paints, as "a natural growth out of a need."
He used hardened brushes, sticks, and even basting syringes equally pigment applicators. By defying the convention of painting on an upright surface, he added a new dimension by being able to view and utilise paint to his canvases from all directions—the term all-over painting has been used to describe some of his work, also as the work of other artists from that time.
In the process of making paintings in this way, he moved abroad from figurative representation, and challenged the Western tradition of using easel and brush. In addition, he also moved away from the use of merely the hand and wrist, since he used his whole body to paint.
Titles with Numbers
Pollock wanted an stop to the search for figurative elements in his paintings, so he abased titles and started numbering his paintings instead. The numbering relates to the way composers title their works. Furthering the musical metaphor, Pollock's action paintings have been oftentimes described every bit improvisational works of art, similar to how jazz musicians approach the performance of a piece.
Expiry
At the acme of his fame, Pollock abruptly abandoned the drip style and by 1951 his works had turned darker in colour. This was followed by a return to colour, and he reintroduced figurative elements. During this period Pollock moved to a more commercial gallery and there was bully need from collectors for his new paintings.
In response to this pressure, along with personal frustration, his long-term problem with alcoholism worsened. He painted his two terminal works in 1955. On August 11, 1956, Pollock died in a unmarried-automobile crash in his Oldsmobile convertible while driving under the influence of booze.
Later on Pollock's demise at historic period 44, his widow, Lee Krasner, managed his estate and ensured that Pollock'due south reputation remained strong despite irresolute fine art-world trends. They are both buried in Greenish River Cemetery in Springs, Long Isle, NY.
Color-Field Painting
Color-field painting can be recognized past its large fields of solid color spread across or stained into the canvas to create areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane.
Learning Objectives
Differentiate color-field painting from other gimmicky abstract art such equally abstract expressionism
Cardinal Takeaways
Key Points
- Colour-field painting is a manner of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s. Information technology is closely linked to abstract expressionism, post-painterly abstraction, and lyrical abstraction.
- Distinct from the emotional free energy and gestural surface marks and paint treatment seen in the piece of work of abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, color-field painting came beyond as cool and austere.
- The move places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and procedure, with colour itself becoming the subject matter.
- Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Clyfford Nevertheless, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Morris Louis are amid the many artists who used color-field techniques in their work.
- Color-field painters revolutionized the fashion paint could be finer applied, through their utilise of acrylic paint and techniques such equally staining and spraying.
Key Terms
- abstract expressionism: An American genre of modernistic art that used improvised techniques to generate highly abstract forms.
- action painting: A genre of mod fine art in which the pigment is dribbled, splashed, or poured onto the canvas to obtain a spontaneous and totally abstract image.
- lyrical brainchild: A blazon of abstruse painting related to abstruse expressionism; in use since the 1940s.
Colour-Field Painting
Colour-field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s. Inspired past European modernism and closely related to abstract expressionism, many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering abstract expressionists.
Colour-field is characterized primarily by its use of large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas to create areas of unbroken surface and a flat motion picture plane. The move places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action than abstract expressionism, favoring instead an overall consistency of form and process, with colour itself condign the subject matter.
Encompassing several decades from the mid-20th century through the early 21st century, the history of color-field painting can be separated into three divide only related generations of painters:
- Abstract expressionism.
- Post-painterly abstraction.
- Lyrical abstraction.
Some of the artists fabricated works in all three eras that chronicle to all of the iii styles.
Clement Greenberg
The focus of attention in the gimmicky art earth began to shift from Paris to New York after World War 2 and the evolution of American Abstract Expressionism. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, Cloudless Greenberg was the starting time art critic to advise and identify a dichotomy betwixt differing tendencies within the abstract expressionist canon—especially between action painting and what Greenberg termed mail service-painterly abstraction (today known as color-field).
Color-Field Formats
By the late 1950s and early 1960s, young artists began to interruption away stylistically from abstruse expressionism, experimenting with new ways of handling paint and color. Moving away from the gesture and angst of action painting towards flat, clear picture planes and a seemingly calmer language, color-field artists used formats of stripes, targets, and simple geometric patterns to concentrate on color as the dominant theme their paintings.
Colour-field painting initially referred to a particular blazon of abstract expressionism, exemplified peculiarly in the work of Marker Rothko, Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, Robert Motherwell, Adolph Gottlieb and several series of paintings past 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 profoundly reduced formats, simplified or regulated systems, and basic references to nature to draw the focus of the painting to color, and the interactions of color, as the most important element.
An of import distinction between color-field painting and abstract expressionism is the way paint is handled. The most basic defining technique of painting is the awarding of pigment, and the color-field painters revolutionized the way paint could exist effectively applied.
H2o-soluble, artist-quality acrylic paints beginning became commercially available in the early 1960s, congruent with the color-field motion. The nearly common applications were:
- Stain painting, where artists mix and dilute their paint in buckets or java cans to make it a more fluid liquid, then 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 big expanses and fields of colour sprayed beyond the sail.
- The use of stripes.
Colour-field painting initially appeared to be absurd and austere due to these methods of handling paint that tended to eschew the individual mark of the artist. However, color-field painting has proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive, albeit in a different way from gestural abstract expressionism.
The New York School
The New York School was an informal group of American abstract painters and other artists that was active in the 1950s and 1960s.
Learning Objectives
Explain what the New York Schoolhouse is known for and who its proponents were
Key Takeaways
Key Points
- The New York Schoolhouse was an breezy group of abstruse painters and other artists in NYC though information technology has go associated most with the abstruse expressionist motion. Although abstract expressionism spread speedily throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York Metropolis and California.
- New York Schoolhouse artists drew inspiration from surrealism and contemporary art movements such as activeness painting, abstract expressionism, jazz, improvisational theater, and experimental music.
- The piece of work of the New York School was documented through almanac exhibitions of painting and sculpture from 1951–1957, most notably in the ninth Street Art Exhibition.
- In add-on to painting, the New York School was associated with many poets, dancers, composers, jazz musicians, and writers.
Key Terms
- surrealism: An artistic movement and an aesthetic philosophy, pre-dating abstract expressionism, that aims for the liberation of the mind by emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the subconscious.
- GI Bill: The Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, known informally as the GI Pecker, was a constabulary that provided a range of benefits for returning World War Ii veterans (commonly referred to as GIs).
- abstract expressionism: An American genre of modern art that used improvised techniques to generate highly abstract forms.
The New York School
The New York School was an breezy 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 motion of aAbstract expressionism, such as the piece of 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 item activeness painting, abstract expressionism, jazz, improvisational theater, experimental music, and the interaction of friends in the New York City art globe's vanguard circumvolve.
Abstract Expressionism
A school of painting that flourished afterwards World War Two until the early on 1960s, abstract expressionism is characterized by the view that art is non-representational and chiefly improvisational. Abstruse expressionist paintings share sure characteristics, including the apply of large canvases, and an all-over approach whereby the whole canvas is treated with equal importance (as opposed to the center being of more involvement than the edges). The canvas as the arena became a credo of action painting, while the integrity of the picture plane became a credo of the colour-field painters.
The post-World War Two era benefited some of the artists who were recognized early on by fine art critics. Some artists from New York, such every bit Norman Bluhm and Sam Francis, took advantage of the GI Bill and left for Europe, to return later with acclamation.
Many artists from all across the U.S. arrived in New York Metropolis to seek recognition, and past the end of the decade the list of artists associated with the New York School had greatly increased. Painters, sculptors, and printmakers created art that was termed action painting, fluxus, color-field painting, hard-border painting, pop art, minimal art and lyrical brainchild, amongst other styles and movements associated with abstruse expressionism.
ninth 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 post-state of war New York avant-garde, collectively known as the New York School.
The evidence was hung past Leo Castelli, as he was liked by most of the artists and idea of as someone who would hang the exhibition without favoritism. The opening of the evidence was a great success. According to the critic, historian, and curator Bruce Altshuler, "It appeared as though a line had been crossed, a step into a larger art globe whose hereafter was bright with possibility."
Interdisciplinary Influences in the New York School
In addition 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 gimmicky avant-garde art movements, in particular the activeness painting of their friends in the New York Metropolis fine art globe like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
In the 1960s, the piece of work of the advanced minimalist composers La Monte Young, Philip Glass, Tony Conrad, Steve Reich, and Terry Riley became prominent in the New York fine art globe. 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.
At that place are besides commonalities among the New York School and members of the beat-generation poets who were active in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in New York Metropolis, including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs, Diane Wakoski, and several others.
Abstruse Expressionist Sculpture
During the postwar menses, many sculptors fabricated piece of work in the prevalent styles of the time: abstract expressionism, minimalism and popular fine art.
Learning Objectives
Evaluate how sculpture from 1945–1970 was influenced by abstruse expressionism, minimalism, and popular art
Key Takeaways
Key Points
- Abstract expressionist sculpture was greatly influenced by surrealism and its emphasis on spontaneous or subconscious cosmos.
- Minimalist sculptures oft set out to betrayal the essence or identity of a subject through the elimination of all non-essential forms or concepts. These works are ofttimes characterized by geometric, cubic forms, equality of parts, repetition, neutral surfaces, and the use of industrial materials.
- The sculptors Claes Oldenburg and George Segal were important proponents of pop fine art in their use of found-objects and how they reproduced everyday commercial objects as fine art.
Key Terms
- pop art: An fine art motility that emerged in the 1950s, that presented a challenge to traditions of fine art past including imagery from popular civilization such as advertising, news, etc.
- found object: A natural object, or one manufactured for some other purpose, considered every bit part of a work of art.
Abstract Expressionism and Sculpture
While Abstract Expressionism is most closely associated with painting, a number of sculptors were integral to the motion too. David Smith, Dorothy Dehner, Herbert Ferber, Isamu Noguchi, Ibram Lassaw, Theodore Roszak, Phillip Pavia, Mary Callery, Richard Stankiewicz, Louise Bourgeois, and Louise Nevelson in particular were considered to be important members of the move.
Similar to abstract expressionist painting, sculptural piece of work from the motility was profoundly influenced by surrealism and its accent on spontaneous or hidden creation. Abstract expressionist sculpture, like painting from the movement, was more interested in process than product, which tin can go far difficult to visually distinguish works by aesthetics alone, so it is important to take into account what the artist has to say most their process.
The sculptures of David Smith, for example, sought to limited two-dimensional subjects that had never before been shown in three dimensions. His work blurred the distinctions betwixt sculpture and painting, more often than not making apply of frail tracery rather than solid form, with a 2-dimensional appearance that contradicted the traditional idea of sculpture in the round.
Minimalism
Minimalism during the 1960s and 1970s was a reaction confronting the painterly subjectivity of abstruse expressionism that dominated the previous decades. Minimalist artists explicitly stated that their art was non about cocky-expression. Instead, Minimalist works often set out to expose the essence or identity of a subject area through the elimination of all non-essential forms or concepts.
These works are ofttimes 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 non 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 bachelor fluorescent calorie-free fixtures. The lack of the mark of the artist's hand in these cases speak to the notion of exposing the true form of the sculptural object, a meaning tenet of the minimalist movement.
Donald Judd
Donald Judd, who disavowed the term minimalism, and preferred to refer to his sculptures equally specific objects, used uncomplicated, repeated forms to explore infinite. His works were often fabricated (rather than sculpted) out of metals, industrial plywood and concrete, and therefore defied piece of cake classification as sculpture.
Judd'south "Untitled," 1977, applies the simplicity and geometric grade typical of minimalist works. Fabricated from concrete, the slice comes across equally potentially industrially created as it lacks the mark of the artist's mitt that is so often seen in works of art, favoring instead a cool austerity that highlights the qualities of the form and the material used to fabricate information technology.
Pop Fine art
At that place were numerous artists working in sculpture who were associated with the pop art movement. Ii important examples are Claes Oldenburg and George Segal.
Claes Oldenburg
Oldenburg began his creative practice as part of a grouping of artists reacting to Abstract Expressionism's sublime gestures with figural drawings and papier mache sculptures. His creative trajectory took him from making found-object paintings littered with urban debris to plaster sculptures of everyday commercial and manufactured objects. He afterward created sculptures of similar subjects on larger and larger scales, first sewing soft sculptures out of sail, so turning to large outdoor monuments in public spaces.
George Segal
George Segal, another artist associated with the popular-fine art motility, was best known for his life-size figures made from plaster and cast casts. These figures, often left with minimal color and detail and given a ghostly, hollow appearance, inhabited tableaux constructed of institute objects such equally a street corner, a passenger vehicle, or a diner.
Common practices seen in pop-art sculptural work include the display of found art objects, the representation of consumer appurtenances, the placing of typical non-art objects within a gallery setting, and the abstraction of familiar objects. Nosotros tin can come across 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 field matter becomes abstracted, its original function simultaneously contradistinct and highlighted.
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