ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

Abstract- Method of presenting the art subjects

DEFINITION
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

This is a style of painting that combines abstract form and expressionist emotional value. It started in the mid 1940s in New York but its influence comes much earlier from Surrealism and Cubism. It is often considered Americas most important contribution to Modernism.

SURREALISM
Surrealism released unconscious feelings by focusing on dream images and to abandon conscious control. Surrealists were inspired by subconscious thoughts and visions giving their artworks a fantasy approach. Surrealism has more of a realistic approach than Cubism.

CUBISM
Cubism is a more modern art movement in which forms are abstracted by using an analytical approach to the object and painting the basic geometric solid of the subject. Cubism is a backlash to the impressionist period in which there is more of an emphasis of light and color.

DEFINITION
ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

Abstract Expressionism is a modern art movement that flowered in America after the Second World War and held sway until the dawn of Pop Art in the 1960's. With this movement New York replaced Paris as the center of the art world.

HISTORY
Abstract Expressionism

Where did it started?

Abstract Expressionism has its roots in other earlier 20th century art movements such as Cubism and Surrealism that promoted abstraction rather than representation. The psychoanalytic theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung provided the intellectual context in this quest for new subject matter.

Who were the major artists in this movement?

Abstract Expressionism

The major players in Abstract Expression were: Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Clyfford Still, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Philip Guston, Lee Krasner, Ad Reinhardt and sculptor David Smith. These artists formed what is known as The New York School. Some were Americans by birth, but others came from Europe to the United States as a result of pre-war & wartime upheavals.

What were these artists trying to achieve?

Abstract Expressionism

The Abstract Expressionists' goal was a raw and impulsive art. What mattered were the qualities of the paint itself and the act of painting itself.

THE GLAZIER
Willem de Kooning (American, born The Netherlands, 19041997)

The Glazier belongs to an early series of menplacidly sitting or standing, singly or in pairswhich were painted in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
The Glazier has a ghostly, elusive quality. Parts of the body, especially the arms and head, seem to evaporate into veils of color, while other sections of the picturethe face, right shoulder, trouser creases, and table coveringare quite solidly modeled.

UNTITLED
Jackson Pollock (American, 19121956)

This large untitled work on paper displays the great control and facility that Pollock also applied to his considerably larger canvases. Dripping skeins of bright red enamel over a linear understructure of black ink, his hand moved like a virtuoso around the sheet. Lines thicken and thin, punctuate and envelop, with poetic grace. The dynamic abstract composition that results embodies a sense of harnessed energy and rapid motion.

WOMAN
Willem de Kooning (American, born the Netherlands, 19041997)
De Kooning incorporates collage elements, which intensifies the jarring effect of this blend of delineated and inchoate elements. Here, a bright red mouth has been taken from a cigarette ad in a magazine and affixed to the work. In an interview of 1963, the artist described its role: "First of all I felt everything ought to have a mouth. Maybe it was like a pun, maybe it's even sexual it helped me immensely to have this real thing. I don't know why I did it with the mouth. Maybe the grinit's rather like the Mesopotamian idols." The reference is to two Sumerian statues that were on view at the Metropolitan Museum in the 1940s and '50s. De Kooning was a regular visitor to the Museum, drawing inspiration at various points in his career from diverse sources in art history, from the Roman paintings of Boscoreale to portraits by Ingres and the Le Nain brothers.

THE FLESH EATERS

William Baziotes (American, 19121963)

Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 70

Robert Motherwell (American, 19151991)

CREDITS! MORE PHOTOS HERE:

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/abex/hd _abex.htm