Abstract Expressionism Flashcards
After World War II, the capital of the art world shifted from Paris, long-standing home of the Royal Academy and the Salon, to New York. Give two reasons for that move.
- Europeans fled to the US and brought modernism
- American Artist chose abstract and nonrepresentatinal styles that were linked with free spirit of American democracy
- The new rising of abstract expressionism
The most popular type of art in the US throughout the 1930s was the Regionalism of an artist like Grant Wood and his painting American Gothic. How did that style become so popular? (i.e., who patronized it? And where was it seen?)
It was very traditional and nostalgic approach with realistic lighting and it was representational accuracy to capture symbols of American value (the American Dream)
Jackson Pollock studied under a famous Regionalist painter named Thomas Hart Benton, but late in the 1930s he was exposed to Surrealism. What qualities of Surrealism influenced Pollock?
Spontaneous, automatic drawing
The name “Abstract Expressionism” is really the key to understanding the movement; it is a combination of “Abstract” and “Expressionism.” What is “abstract” about it? And what does it take from “Expressionism”?
Abstract because it breaks tradition of what something should look like.
It takes from Expressionism the idea that painting is able to portray emotions and it is more important than objective observations
Would you say Abstract Expressionism is a visually unified style then? (i.e., do all the paintings look the same? Do all Abstract Expressionists use Pollock’s “drip technique”?) What qualities unify all the Abstract Expressionists?
Not all abstract expressionism paintings look the same or use the drip style
They are all unified as they attempted to communicate raw emotion.
The art critic Clement Greenberg connected Jackson Pollock in a chain that went back to Picasso and then back to Cezanne and then back to Monet. What did Greenberg say joined Pollock to them?
He believed that what connected all of them was their use of line, color, and texture and the fact that all of them did representational art.
How did Pollock actually make a painting? Where was the canvas? Did he use traditional oil paint in tubes and a brush? How was the paint applied?
He used a canvas and put it on the floor and used house or industry paint with a brush and started to paint, however, the brush never made contact with the canvas.
The Abstract Expressionism of Jackson Pollock is a third huge breakthrough in painting after Renaissance linear perspective which created the illusion of depth on a 2-dimensional surface and Cubism which records how the eye actually sees in fragments and assembles in the brain. What is the actual painting here in Pollock’s case? What does it record?
His paintings record the physical act of painting and capture the energy and spontaneity of the creative process.
How does Jung’s concept of “collective unconscious” explain the abiding popularity of Pollock’s work? What happens to the viewer when they stand in front of a Pollock painting?
Collective unconscious is the idea that all of us have shared archetype and symbols we can recognize. When it comes to his artwork, we can understand the emotions he went through when making the piece of art and can feel a sense of discovery and it taps in our unconscious mind.
How does the scale of Pollock’s paintings impact the viewer?
Because of how big it is, it makes the viewer feel powerful and to really feel the emotions of all the strokes in the art piece
How does our knowledge of “fractals patterns” explain the abiding popularity of Pollock’s work as well?
They are natural and organic figures that we see in trees and lightening and we prefer them from 1.1-1.5. When comparing the paintings of Pollock, his reaches the middle ground and stimulate our brains to know and like the artwork
How is the Color Field painting of Mark Rothko different from Pollock’s work? What qualities do the two different styles have in common that allow them to be grouped under the umbrella of Abstract Expressionism?
Color field has less emphasis on gesture and more interest in form and color; abstraction as end to itself. This is more of a controlled piece of abstract expressionism. They both have that element of it being deeply personal and tapped in the unconscious mind
