Art History What Aspect of Surrealism Was Most Influential to the Abstract Expressionist Painters

The Development of Abstruse Expressionism

Abstract expressionism was an American, post–World War II art motility.

Learning Objectives

Explicate the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Abstract expressionism has an image of existence rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic, and nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to whatever number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even to work that is neither especially abstruse nor expressionist.
• Although information technology is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it.
• Abstruse expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the apply of large canvases and an all-over approach, 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 breezy 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–World War II fine art move. Although the term abstract expressionism was start applied to American art in 1946 past the fine art critic Robert Coates, information technology had been used previously in Federal republic of germany's Der Sturm magazine in 1919.

Abstruse expressionism is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and cocky-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 epitome of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic, and nihilistic. In practice, the term is applied to any 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 equally 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 careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. In many instances, abstract fine art implied the expression of ideas that concern the spiritual, the unconscious, and the mind.

Characteristics of Abstract Expressionist Painting

Abstract expressionism expanded and adult the definitions and possibilities that artists had available in the creation of new works of art. Although abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the The states, the major centers of this manner were New York and California. Abstract expressionist paintings share sure characteristics, including the utilize of large canvases and an all-over approach, in which the whole canvas is treated with equal importance (as opposed to the eye existence of more involvement than the edges).

No. 5: Jackson Pollock is known for his techniques in activity painting, a style of abstract expressionism in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed, or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied, as seen in this painting done in 1948.

Jackson Pollock'due south energetic action paintings, with their busy feel, are dissimilar 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 exist absurd and ascetic, eschewing the individual marking in favor of big, flat areas of color, which these artists considered to be the essential nature of visual brainchild, forth with the actual shape of the canvas. In later years, color-field painting has proven to exist both sensual and deeply expressive, albeit in a different way from gestural abstract expressionism.

New York

During the menstruation 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 equally the new heart of the art world.

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

Graham'southward influence on American art during the early 1940s was particularly visible in the work of Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, and Jackson Pollock. Gorky'due south contributions to American and earth art are hard to overestimate. His works—such every bit The Liver is the Erect's Comb, The Betrothal II, and 1 Yr the Milkweed—immediately prefigured abstract expressionism.

Jackson Pollock

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

Pollock redefined what it was to produce art. His motility away from easel painting and conventionality was a liberating indicate to the artists of his era and to all that came later. Artists realized that Jackson Pollock'south process—the placing of unstretched raw sail on the flooring where it could be attacked from all iv sides using artist materials and industrial materials—essentially took making art beyond any prior boundary.

Jackson Pollock and Action Painting

Action painting, created by Jackson Pollock, is a style in which paint is spontaneously splattered, smeared, or dripped onto the sheet.

Learning Objectives

Draw Jackson Pollock'southward method of activeness painting

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• Action painting was developed every bit part of the abstract expressionism movement that took place in post–Globe War 2 America, especially in New York, during the 1940s through until the early on 1960s.
• Activity painting places the accent on the human action of painting rather than the concluding work as an artistic object.
• Jackson Pollock challenged traditional conventions of painting by using constructed, resin-based paints, laying his canvas on the floor, and using hardened brushes, sticks, and even basting syringes to utilize paint.

Key Terms

• abstract: Art that does non depict objects in the natural world, but instead uses color and form in a not-representational mode.
• artful: Concerned with dazzler, artistic impact, or appearance.

Action Painting

Action painting is a manner of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed, or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied with a castor. The resulting piece of work often emphasizes the concrete act of painting itself equally an essential aspect of the finished piece of work.

Action painting is inextricably linked to abstract expressionism, a school of painting popular in mail-World War II 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 Marker Rothko, amidst others.

The term action painting was coined by the American fine 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 School painters and critics. According to Rosenberg, the sheet was not an object, but rather "an arena in which to human action. "

Rosenberg's critique shifted the accent from the object to the struggle of painting itself, with the finished work existence just the concrete manifestation, a kind of residue, of the actual work of art, which was in the process of the painting's creation.

Action 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 pigment drip onto the sail while rhythmically dancing or even while standing on top of the unstretched sheet laying on the floor—both techniques invented by one of the nearly important abstruse expressionists: Jackson Pollock.

Jackson Pollock

My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvass to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more than at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk effectually it, piece of work from the four sides, and literally exist in the painting.

Born in Cody, Wyoming in 1912, Jackson Pollock moved to New York Metropolis 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 every bit the Pollock-Krasner Firm and Studio in the Springs area of East Hampton, Long Island, NY.

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

Materials and Process

After his motion 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 use of household paints, instead of fine art paints, equally "a natural growth out of a demand."

He used hardened brushes, sticks, and fifty-fifty basting syringes as pigment applicators. By defying the convention of painting on an upright surface, he added a new dimension by beingness 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, as well every bit the work of other artists from that fourth dimension.

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 addition, he also moved abroad from the use of only the manus and wrist, since he used his whole body to pigment.

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

Titles with Numbers

Pollock wanted an end to the search for figurative elements in his paintings, so he abandoned titles and started numbering his paintings instead. The numbering relates to the way composers title their works. Furthering the musical metaphor, Pollock'southward activeness paintings have been often described equally improvisational works of fine art, similar to how jazz musicians approach the performance of a slice.

Death

At the peak of his fame, Pollock abruptly abandoned the baste style and by 1951 his works had turned darker in color. This was followed by a render to color, and he reintroduced figurative elements. During this period Pollock moved to a more than commercial gallery and in that location was slap-up need from collectors for his new paintings.

In response to this pressure, along with personal frustration, his long-term trouble with alcoholism worsened. He painted his 2 last works in 1955. On August 11, 1956, Pollock died in a unmarried-car crash in his Oldsmobile convertible while driving under the influence of alcohol.

After Pollock's demise at age 44, his widow, Lee Krasner, managed his manor and ensured that Pollock'due south reputation remained strong despite irresolute art-world trends. They are both buried in Green River Cemetery in Springs, Long Island, NY.

Color-Field Painting

Color-field painting can be recognized by its large fields of solid color spread across or stained into the canvass to create areas of unbroken surface and a apartment picture airplane.

Learning Objectives

Differentiate color-field painting from other contemporary abstract art such every bit abstract expressionism

Key Takeaways

Cardinal Points

• Color-field painting is a style of abstruse 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 pigment handling seen in the work of abstract expressionists like Jackson Pollock, color-field painting came across every bit cool and ascetic.
• The motility places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action in favor of an overall consistency of form and process, with color itself becoming the subject matter.
• Marker Rothko, Frank Stella, Clyfford However, Barnett Newman, Adolph Gottlieb, and Morris Louis are amidst the many artists who used color-field techniques in their work.
• Color-field painters revolutionized the fashion 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 fine art that used improvised techniques to generate highly abstract forms.
• action painting: A genre of modernistic fine art in which the paint is dribbled, splashed, or poured onto the canvas to obtain a spontaneous and totally abstract epitome.
• lyrical brainchild: A blazon of abstract painting related to abstract expressionism; in apply since the 1940s.

Color-Field Painting

Color-field painting is a fashion 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 use of big fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas to create areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture show plane. The movement places less accent on gesture, brushstrokes, and activity than abstract expressionism, favoring instead an overall consistency of form and process, with color itself becoming 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 split up but related generations of painters:

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

Some of the artists made works in all 3 eras that relate to all of the 3 styles.

Clement Greenberg

The focus of attention in the contemporary art world began to shift from Paris to New York after Earth War II and the development of American Abstract Expressionism. During the belatedly 1940s and early 1950s, Clement Greenberg was the beginning fine art critic to suggest and identify a dichotomy between differing tendencies within the abstract expressionist canon—specially betwixt activeness painting and what Greenberg termed mail-painterly abstraction (today known as color-field).

Color-Field Formats

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, immature artists began to pause away stylistically from abstract expressionism, experimenting with new means of handling paint 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 elementary geometric patterns to concentrate on color as the dominant theme their paintings.

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

Colour-field painting sought to rid art of superfluous rhetoric and gesture. Artists like Morris Louis, Jules Olitski, Kenneth Noland, Friedel Dzubas, and Frank Stella frequently used profoundly reduced formats, simplified or regulated systems, and basic references to nature to draw the focus of the painting to colour, and the interactions of color, as the most important element.

Harran II: During the late 1950s and early on 1960s, Frank Stella was a significant figure in the emergence of minimalism, post-painterly abstraction, and colour-field painting. His shaped canvases of the 1960s revolutionized abstruse painting, such as this one from 1967.

Offset: This colour-field painting is characterized by simple geometric forms and repetitive, regulated systems. It was painted by Kenneth Noland in 1958.

Who's Afraid of Red, Xanthous and Blue?: The flat, solid movie plane that is typical of color-field paintings is evident in this 1966 piece by Barnet Newman, where the color ruby-red takes middle phase.

An important distinction between color-field painting and abstract expressionism is the mode paint is handled. The most basic defining technique of painting is the application of pigment, and the colour-field painters revolutionized the way paint could be finer practical.

H2o-soluble, artist-quality acrylic paints starting time became commercially available in the early 1960s, congruent with the colour-field motility. The most common applications were:

• Stain painting, where artists mix and dilute their paint in buckets or coffee cans to brand it a more fluid liquid, then pour it onto raw, unprimed canvas and draw shapes and areas as they stain.
• Spray painting, a technique using a spray gun to create big expanses and fields of colour sprayed across the canvass.
• The employ of stripes.

Color-field painting initially appeared to be cool and ascetic due to these methods of handling paint that tended to eschew the private mark of the artist. However, color-field painting has proven to exist both sensual and securely expressive, albeit in a different way from gestural abstract expressionism.

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

The New York School

The New York School was an informal grouping 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

Key Takeaways

Key Points

• The New York School was an informal grouping of abstruse painters and other artists in NYC though it has go associated most with the abstract expressionist movement. Although abstract expressionism spread rapidly throughout the Usa, the major centers of this manner were New York City and California.
• New York School artists drew inspiration from surrealism and contemporary fine art movements such as action painting, abstract expressionism, jazz, improvisational theater, and experimental music.
• The 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 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 past emphasizing the critical and imaginative powers of the subconscious.
• GI Neb: The Servicemen'due south Readjustment Human activity of 1944, known informally as the GI Beak, was a police that provided a range of benefits for returning World War 2 veterans (commonly referred to as GIs).
• abstract expressionism: An American genre of modern fine art that used improvised techniques to generate highly abstract forms.

The New York School

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 Urban center. It represented, and is ofttimes synonymous with, the art movement of aAbstract expressionism, such equally the work of Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning.

The artists of the New York School drew their inspiration from surrealism and other contemporary, 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 world's vanguard circle.

No. five: 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 advisedly applied, such equally this one done in 1948.

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

Abstract Expressionism

A school of painting that flourished afterwards Globe War II until the early 1960s, abstruse expressionism is characterized by the view that fine art is non-representational and chiefly improvisational. Abstruse expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of large canvases, and an all-over arroyo whereby the whole canvas is treated with equal importance (equally opposed to the center being of more than interest than the edges). The canvas equally the arena became a ideology of action painting, while the integrity of the motion-picture show plane became a credo of the color-field painters.

The post-World War II era benefited some of the artists who were recognized early on past art critics. Some artists from New York, such equally Norman Bluhm and Sam Francis, took advantage of the GI Bill and left for Europe, to return later with acclaim.

Many artists from all across the U.S. arrived in New York City to seek recognition, and past the cease 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, difficult-edge painting, popular fine art, minimal art and lyrical abstraction, among other styles and movements associated with abstruse expressionism.

ninth Street Fine art Exhibition

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

The show was hung by Leo Castelli, every bit he was liked by most of the artists and idea of as 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 as though a line had been crossed, a footstep into a larger art globe whose futurity was vivid with possibility."

Interdisciplinary Influences in the New York School

In addition to painting, the New York Schoolhouse was associated with many poets, dancers, composers, jazz musicians, and writers. Poets drew on inspiration from surrealism and the contemporary advanced fine art movements, in item the activity painting of their friends in the New York City art earth like Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.

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

There are likewise commonalities among the New York Schoolhouse and members of the beat-generation poets who were agile in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s in New York Urban center, including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, William Due south. Burroughs, Diane Wakoski, and several others.

Abstract Expressionist Sculpture

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

Learning Objectives

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

Key Takeaways

Primal Points

• Abstract expressionist sculpture was profoundly influenced past surrealism and its accent on spontaneous or subconscious creation.
• Minimalist sculptures ofttimes set 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 apply of industrial materials.
• The sculptors Claes Oldenburg and George Segal were important proponents of pop art in their utilise of found-objects and how they reproduced everyday commercial objects as fine fine art.

Primal Terms

• pop art: An fine art movement that emerged in the 1950s, that presented a challenge to traditions of fine fine art by including imagery from pop culture such equally advertising, news, etc.
• found object: A natural object, or one manufactured for some other purpose, considered as 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 movement likewise. 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 movement.

Similar to abstract expressionist painting, sculptural work from the movement was greatly influenced past surrealism and its accent on spontaneous or subconscious creation. Abstruse expressionist sculpture, similar painting from the motility, was more interested in process than product, which can go far hard to visually distinguish works by aesthetics alone, so information technology is important to take into account what the artist has to say well-nigh their process.

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

Aboriginal Household: David Smith was an of import 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 set 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 truthful form of the sculptural object, a significant tenet of the minimalist move.

Donald Judd

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

Judd's "Untitled," 1977, applies the simplicity and geometric form typical of minimalist works. Fabricated from concrete, the piece comes across as potentially industrially created as information technology 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 course and the textile 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 Art

There were numerous artists working in sculpture who were associated with the pop fine art movement. 2 important examples are Claes Oldenburg and George Segal.

Claes Oldenburg

Oldenburg began his artistic practice as function of a group of artists reacting to Abstract Expressionism's sublime gestures with figural drawings and papier mache sculptures. His artistic trajectory took him from making found-object paintings littered with urban debris to plaster sculptures of everyday commercial and manufactured objects. He subsequently created sculptures of similar subjects on larger and larger scales, offset sewing soft sculptures out of canvas, and then turning to large outdoor monuments in public spaces.

George Segal

George Segal, some other artist associated with the pop-art movement, was best known for his life-size figures made from plaster and bandage casts. These figures, often left with minimal color and detail and given a ghostly, hollow appearance, inhabited tableaux synthetic of institute objects such as a street corner, a coach, or a diner.

Common practices seen in popular-fine art sculptural work include the display of institute art objects, the representation of consumer goods, the placing of typical non-art objects within a gallery setting, and the abstraction of familiar objects. We tin can run into this abstraction in such works every bit Plug by Oldenburg.

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

Plug: Claes Oldenburg produced oversized reproductions of familiar objects in increased sizes to abstract the subject matter, such as this one done in 1970.

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