_abstract expressionism _
By: Christina Owen
It was a full 170 years after Americans had their political revolution that
they won an aesthetic revolution. American art to get rid of its inhibiting
mechanisms- provincialism, over-dependence on European sources, and an
indifferent public- and liberate itself into a quality and expressive force
equal to, or exceeding that of art produced anywhere within the period. Few
would argue that the painting and sculpture that emerged from the so-called
New York School in the mid 1940s was the foremost artistic phenomenon of its
time and was labeled as the Abstract Expressionist movement. Abstract
expressionism was a reaction to social realism, surrealism, and primitive art
in the 1940s; this is a turning point in American art history because it
caused the rest of the art world to recognize New York as the new center of
innovationThe movement synthesized three other previous art forms. Social
Realists "socially grounded" activist art of the 1930s responded to the
disaster of the economy in America and the rise of fascism abroad by working
in socially conscience styles. "This art form was contaminated by the cliches
of the Stalinist popular front" (American Visions p. 469). Abstract
expressionists responded to these art forms by deriving their new style from
personal experience and by embodying this in contemporary forms, instead of
getting their ideas from politics. The influence of Surrealism in The Abstract
Expressionist Movement was its stress on the power of the unconscience as the
most fertile ground of imagery. The expressionists valued the Surrealist style
because it revealed the action of the dreaming mind and valued the accidental
and the involuntary: "It welcomed the image that rose unbidden from a chaos of
marks" (Modern Art 3rd Ed, p. 265). It also valued the American surrealists'
sense of mission. Their belief that art and life was inseparable heartened
American artists who felt marginal, ignored by other Americans and felt
provincial with respect to Paris. The Abstract Expressionists also used
"primitive" art as a way of cultural escape. They looked at tribal artifacts
in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and believed it was
disclosing one of the main buried roots of modernism. Cave paintings
especially influenced many Abstract expressionists such as Pollock and Rothko.
Aspects of cave paintings that were appealing to the Expressionists were the
apparent lack of interest in composition. Sacred signs overlaid over
unconfined surfaces were appealing because the artist was not restricted by a
framing edge. They also admired the scale of cave paintings. They were very
big and encouraged their followers to paint big. The most significant impact
of primitive art was the cave paintings admirable freedom, which influenced
the free, unbound style in which the abstract expressionists painted. The
revolt of fascism and realism is freedom, which is articulated in the free
form style of the Abstract Expressionist
Americans for generations had
sought to achieve their own artistic maturity and had largely failed, either
by inadequate assimilation of European models or by America's own
provincialism. The Abstract Expressionist Movement was so influential because
it was the first time that American artists were doing something new and
different from Europe. American Artists for the first time had an advantage
over Europe, which virtually transferred the center of the art world from
Paris to New York. Ironically, it was the paralyzing poverty of the Great
Depression that gave younger American artists their first advantage. Beginning
in 1935, with the Federal Art Project organized under the Works Progress
Administration, artists could earn a living as artists and do so free to
create in whatever manner they might choose. "They could even gravitate to New
York, traditionally America's safe haven for the revolutionary, and there band
together as a beleaguered community." (Frank Romani). Just as Paris had
nurtured such foreign artists such as Picasso, Gris, and Chagall, along with
its host of native French masters, New York attracted a cosmopolitan
assortment of aspiring painters and sculptors. The reason why many foreign
artists migrated to New York was because European artists were in an area that
was occupied by World War II. Many artists fled from Europe to the United
States, which stifled artistic expression in Europe while at the same time
stimulated artistic expression in America. New York became an artist's utopia.
The rise of imperialism created American pride and patriotism. Artists
expressed themselves freely without anyone trying to control their expression
or ideas. World War II helped the New York School of Artists perfect their
methodology and aided them in their search for significant content
The
Abstract Expressionists as a group shared a common experience, however, as
individuals they did not think of themselves as a group with common ideals.
Similarities between artists were that they all wanted to use personal
intuition to make something new and distinctively American, yet universally
valid and unprovincial. Within The Abstract Expressionist Movement, there were
different groups of artists that had a particular style. The first to break
through and make a significant impact on the art world was Jackson Pollock
(1912-56). The paintings that Pollock exhibited in 1943 made the first and
most emphatic public expression of the new mood. Pollock was a major influence
on the art world because he pushed Expressionism to a point where "subject
matter was so improbable that all need to retain it had been eliminated"
(Story of Pollock p. 28). Pollock's technique of spreading uncut lengths of
canvas over the floor and of pouring or flinging liquid paint onto it from
above permitted him to literally be in the painting, to move about within it
and thus give equal emphasis to all parts. Although anticipated in
Impressionism, this- the so-called "holistic" composition- was something new
in modern art
The emergence of the Abstract Expressionist in America had a
profound effect on the rest of the art world because it relocated the center
of the art world from Paris to New York. Many factors caused America to be the
new center of Creativity. Political and economical causes such as the Great
Depression and world war II, as well as former artistic genres such as
Surrealism, Social Realism, and primitive American art influenced the Abstract
Expressionist new style.
_Bibliography _
works cited 1. Hunter, Sam and Jacobs, John. Modern Art, 3rd Edition. The
Vendome Press, New York, 1992. 2. Hughes, Robert. American Visions. Alfred A.
knopf, Inc., New York, 1997. 3. Mitchel, Corrine. The Life of Polock. Phaidon
Press Limited, London, 1996. 4. Boston, Marsha. Art History and Studio Art
Instructor, La Jolla Country Day School. 5. Romani, Frank. Art Historian,
School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 6.
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