From Still Life to the Camerato Abstract ExpressionismHow did this happen?

Abstract Expressionism

Art I

World War II:

- The United States recovered much quicker that most of Europe in an economic sense after WWII but the emotional damage was severe

-The horrors of WWII surpassed those of WWI, horrors that we cannot even fathom

- The human loss was profound more than 30 million people lost their lives, and a further 40 million were displaced

- The inhumanity of the German concentration camps as well as, the horror of the dropping of nuclear bombs shook all of humanity to its very core

- Many European artists right after the war used art to try to come to terms with what had happened

Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock Mark Rothko 1906-1970 Jackson Pollock 1928-1956 Both lived around the same time and left a big

impression on the world. Pollock became famous after his death, died

young. Pollock sold his canvases for about $1,500

during his life time, after death they are worth $3 million +

Rothko had fame during his life, more painting jobs called commissions

Abstract Expressionism

Period: Late 1940s , early 1950’s Locale: New York, East Hampton Aim: Express inner life through art Technique: Free application of paint, no

reference to visual reality Theory: Image not result of a preconceived

idea , but of creative process

Action Painting

“Jack

the

Dripper”

Jackson Pollock

Jackson is best known for the huge paintings he made by splattering, throwing, and dripping paint onto his canvases.

Jackson used old, hardened brushes,

sticks, and anything else he could find

that would splatter on paint the way he

liked.

Because Jackson moved around a lot and used so much energy while he painted, he preferred to call his style Action Painting.

Jackson Pollock wanted people to feel and see the energy he felt while painting.

Even though you can’t recognize any objects in Jackson’s most famous paintings, they are filled with expression, movement, and rhythm.

Jackson usually tacked his canvas to the barn floor. He liked to walk all around and be in his painting while he worked. This way, Jackson felt that he was really part of his work.

Jackson Pollock died in a car accident in 1956 when he was only 44 years old.

Important people from all over the world loved to talk and write and argue about his exciting new paintings, but hardly anyone bought his work until years later.

Review Questions

Describe Jackson Pollock’s painting style. What is another name for Abstract

Expressionism? How did Jackson Pollock paint? Do you think Jackson Pollock’s paintings are

art? Would you buy a Jackson Pollock Painting?

The Classic Years of Colour Field Painting50s and 60s

“A painting is not about experience. It is an experience.” (Rothko)

RIGHT: Orange and Yellow 1956

The emotional and spiritual quality of Rothko’s art Rothko did not want to be seen as merely a

colourist “I’m not an abstractionist… I’m not interested

in the relationship of colour to form… I’m interested only in expressing basic human emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom and so on… the people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them.”

Titles – numbers and colours

Like Pollock, Rothko stopped using descriptive titles for his works

Used numbers and colours to distinguish them

Stopped explaining his work

Felt words would paralyze the viewer’s imagination

Untitled 1949

LATE WORKS: Seagram Mural 1958

commissioned for the Four Seasons restaurant inside the Seagram building – but Rothko had misgivings about the setting of a restaurant (would make works seem merely decorative) and later withdrew from the project. He said any body that will pay that much for food will not look at my art.

palette of red, maroon, brown, and black Open shapes suggest windows or portals Offered $35,000 for the job which means $2.5 million today

On the size of his paintings

“I paint very large pictures. I realize the historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however… is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However, you paint a larger picture, you are in it. It isn’t something you command.”

The Rothko Chapel (1964-67)

commissioned by John and Dominique de Menil for the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas

Darker palette – more subtle visual effects, difficult to see forms on ground

Seem to glow from within

• Used canvases to create a an environment that would invite meditation within chapel

The Rothko Chapel, Houston

“[The paintings] are intimate and timeless. They embrace us without enclosing us. Their dark surfaces do not stop the gaze… we can gaze right through these purplish browns, gaze into the infinite.” (Dominique de Menil)

Central panel has a glow

Paintings seem to mirror the melancholy and loneliness Rothko felt in the last years of his life.

The Rothko Room at the Tate Gallery Rothko provides very specific instructions to galleries about how his works are to be viewed. He asked for particular lighting conditions and benches to be put in front of works to invite contemplation.

STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP

Wassily KandinskyComposition VIII

Kandinsky Contrasting Sounds

Wassily Kandinsky

Influence: Wassily Kandinsky Russian painter, whose exploration of the

possibilities of abstraction make him one of the most important innovators in modern art.

Impressed by the works of the Fauves and Post Impressionists, his paintings became more highly colored and loosely organized.

Around 1913 he began working on paintings that derived their inspiration and titles from music.

Review Questions

Describe Jackson Pollock’s painting style. What is another name for Abstract

Expressionism? How did Jackson Pollock paint? Do you think Jackson Pollock’s paintings are

art? Would you buy a Jackson Pollock Painting?

Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky In 1911, along with Franz Marc and other

German Expressionists, Kandinsky formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) group (so called for Kandinsky's love of blue and Marc's love of horses).

Wrote Concerning the Spiritual in Art, the first theoretical treatise on abstraction, which spread his ideas through Europe. He also taught at the Moscow Academy of Fine Arts from 1918 to 1921 and at the Bauhaus in Dessau,

Paved the way for abstract expressionism, the dominant school of painting since World War II (1939-1945).

Abstract Expressionism

The center of the art world shifted to New York.

Not just the product of artistic creation but the active process of creating it.

Discovered the act of anarchy from the Dadaists and Surrealists.

Jackson Pollock

Influences

Took the concept of “Automatism” that they learned from Dadaists one step further; relying on instinct to shape the works of art that were not only irrational but unpremeditated accidents.

Action Painting

“Jack

the

Dripper”

Willem De Kooning

“Old Master of Abstract Expressionism” Worked in a realistic style until 1948 Developed a mature style of slashing brush

strokes Until other AE, he kept his interest in the

human figure and is known for a series of “Woman” paintings

Willem De Kooning

Woman

Willem DeKooning

Whose Name Was Writ in Water, 1975. Oil on canvas, 76 3/4 x 87 3/4 inches. Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. 80.2738. © 2007 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Willem DeKooning

Untitled, 1958. Oil on paper, mounted on Masonite, mounted on wood, 23 x 29 1/8 inches. Peggy Guggenheim Collection. 76.2553.158. © 2007 The Willem de Kooning Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Hans Hofmann

What element of the paintings seems to be closest to the viewer?

Hans Hofmann

Hans Hofmann

Early advocate of the freely splashed pigment Highly influential teacher Push / pull method (repulsion/ attraction of

certain colors) First to experiment with pouring paint German –American painter known for

rectangles of high-key contrasting colors that seem to collide.

Color Field Painters

Helen Frankenthaler

Nature Abhors a Vacuum, 19738 feet 7 1/2 inches wide by 9 feet 4 1/2 inches tal

How do you think Frankenthaler applied this paint?

Helen Frankenthaler

Student of Hans Hofmann Saw the work of Pollock and watercolor artist

John Marin and combined their methods to make “stain paintings”.

Used diluted oil paint on sailcloth to create paintings- guided the paint with sponge and wipers.

Helen Frankenthaler

Jacob’s Ladder

Mark Rothko

Untitled (Violet, Black, Orange, Yellow on White and Red), 1949    

Mark Rothko

“Multiforms" developed into the signature style; by early 1949 Rothko exhibited these new works.

For critics, the paintings were nothing short of a revelation.

Striking symmetrical rectangular blocks of two to three opposing or contrasting, yet complementary colors

Wanted people to view the images from 18 inches away to create intimacy

Jasper Johns

His work is often described as a 'Neo-Dadaist' Johns played with and presented opposites,

contradictions, paradoxes, and ironies, much like Marcel Duchamp

Though the Abstract Expressionists disdained subject matter, in the end it could be said that they simply changed subjects. Johns neutralized the subject, so that something like pure paint--painted surface--could declare itself

Jasper Johns

Jasper Johns

Jasper JohnsThree Flags