Abstract expressionism

Abstract Expressionism is a contemporary pictorial movement within abstraction, specifically, the post-World War II informalist and material trends. The term had been used for the first time in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm, about German expressionism. In the United States, Alfred Barr was the first to use this term in 1929 in connection with the works of Wassily Kandinsky.

Terminology

American critics soon caught on to this new style, notably Clement Greenberg, who wrote for The Nation and Partisan review, as well as Harold Rosenberg and Thomas B. Hess. It was these critics who spoke of American type painting, Abstract expressionism, Action painting, Drip painting or Gestural painting. It is the critic Robert Coates who is credited with coining the term abstract expressionism. However, the artists of this movement rejected the term because they understood that their work was not abstract, in the strict sense, and that they had no relationship with German expressionism.

Abstract expressionism

Within this movement is Action Painting (“Action Painting” or “painting in action”, also translated as “gestural painting”), a term coined by the critic Harold Rosenberg in the year 1952 to refer to the work of artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning. Rosenberg first proposed it in "American Action Painters," a major article published in Art News, vol. 51. Action painting and abstract expressionism are terms that are often used interchangeably, although they are not exactly the same.

Abstract expressionism is also known as New York School, but this denomination covers other arts (music, design, poetry, theater...). It is not really a school with a common style, but a group of artists with similar convictions and who shared a series of pictorial techniques.[1]

Features

It can be noted that it has formal characteristics of this style, first of all, its preference for large formats. They normally worked with oil on canvas.

They are generally abstract in the sense that they eliminate figuration. However, there are exceptions and some use figurative strokes, appearing recognizable figures, as in the Women of Willem de Kooning. The canvases have a geometric aspect that makes them different from previous movements, such as surrealism.

One of the main characteristics of the abstract expressionists is the conception of the surface of the painting as all over (coverage of the surface), to signify an open field without limits on the surface of the painting: the pictorial space is treated frontally and there is no hierarchy between the different parts of the canvas.

The chromaticism is usually very limited: black and white, as well as the primary colors: magenta, yellow and cyan. The expressionist painters who reduced the work to practically a single color were already anticipating minimal art.

This type of painting, with violent strokes of color in large formats, presents anguish and conflict as distinctive features, which is currently considered to reflect the society in which these works arose.

Origins

The expressionists took from surrealism what was automatic in the act of painting, with its references to psychic impulses and the unconscious. Painting a picture was less a reason-directed process and more a spontaneous act, a dynamic bodily action. They were interested, therefore, in the "psychic automatism" that made universal symbols and emotions come out of their minds.

It is not surprising that they were interested in the more symbolic and abstract surrealism, that of Miró, Arp, Masson, Matta, Wolfgang Paalen and Gordon Onslow Ford, more than figurative surrealism. From them they took the organic and biomorphic forms.

Evolution

Initially, it was a movement marked by the influence of surrealism.

The first generation of abstract expressionism was made up of about fifteen painters who worked in New York between 1942 and 1957, among them: Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) who is considered a leader and precursor, William Baziotes, Adolph Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), Ad Reinhardt, Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and Clyfford Still. One of the most important places for the emergence of this movement of young artists was Peggy Guggenheim's Art of this Century art gallery.

Pioneers

Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), an Armenian exiled to New York since 1925, is considered to be the inspiration and initiator of it. He was influenced by surrealism and served as a bridge between European painting between the wars and the American school. Around 1936 he abandoned figuration and, under the influence of Roberto Matta, discovered a new formal language, opting for biomorphic abstract figures. Although he tended towards abstraction and spontaneity, he did not completely dispense with drawing or relinquish control over the brushstroke.

The work of William Baziotes (1912-1963) was always very close to surrealism, who delved into the tendency, with Jungian roots, to investigate ancient myths and primitive art. Since 1941 he used pictorial "automatism", creating biomorphic images with his mythical sense.

One of the works most discussed about his relationship with the movement is that of the painter Armando Reverón (1889-1954), who created during the 1930s a series of works on paper that have been compared with those of Willem de Kooning. Large formats and action painting were also part of his work, although it was not until the 1940s that the first works of this style were produced.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the work of Hans Hofmann (1880-1966), an important teacher. His painting had a cubist base, but he became more abstract in the forties, presenting areas of color in his paintings that contrasted with each other; the style is emotional and vigorous.

With the end of World War II and the return to Europe of many of the exiles, the Surrealist influence eventually waned and the movement became more genuinely American.

It split into two tendencies that can be defined as action painting and color fields. The first of these emphasized more the physical gesture of painting, while the second focused on the application of color in large areas.

Action painting

Within abstract expressionism, action painting stands out, a distinct trend that is sometimes even used to name all these expressionist works. Although, as noted, the term action painting was used by the critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952, it had been used before. Thus, in Berlin in 1919, and in America around 1929, to designate Kandinsky's first abstract compositions.

The center of interest of action painting is the gesture or movement of painting, also called “gestural painting” because of the primacy it gave to the pictorial procedure itself. The act of painting becomes a spontaneous gesture. It is a type of automatism that captures the physical and mental state of the painter. In this way, he eliminates the traditional limits between the painter and the painting, linking the action of painting with the biography of the artist.

Pollock

The action painter par excellence is Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), who is considered the first painter to assimilate Gorky's pictorial training. He is related to surrealism to the extent that his pictorial work is based on "automatism", on an automatic writing that aims to reflect the psychic phenomena that take place inside the artist. Between 1938 and 1942 he worked for the WPA (Works Progress Administration) and painted under the influence of Picasso, Surrealism and Jungian psychoanalysis which he used as a therapy against his alcoholism. But in the case of Pollock, there were other sources of inspiration added. Thus, the culture of the North American Indians, with their symbolic forms and their sand paintings. Similarly, the work of the muralist Siqueiros, in whose experimental workshop he had the opportunity to work in 1936, using air-pump and airbrush paint, as well as industrial synthetic pigments. This also led him to try other materials, such as varnish, aluminum or synthetic enamels.

Pollock would spread the canvas, usually untreated, on the floor, and run or dance around it and into it, spilling the paint evenly. Pollock did not work on the canvas but, many times, inside it. Indeed, he did not work the canvas with traditional tools such as a brush or spatula, but through the dripping technique. Although he is sometimes pointed out as the inventor of it, the truth is that it is considered that it was already used by the surrealist Max Ernst. What can be affirmed is that he popularized it in such a way that dripping is immediately associated with the work and person of Jackson Pollock, to the point that he was nicknamed "Jack the Dripper"., in pun with "Jack the Ripper" (Jack the Ripper).

Dripping consists of letting the paint drip or drip from a container (tube, can or box) with a perforated bottom, which the painter held in his hand or, to a lesser extent, from a stick or spatula. In this way painting was not something that was done with the hand, but with a gesture of the whole body. The great fabrics were filled on all sides, evenly, with color in the form of spots and threads that were mixed. The painter added finer drips made with a stick dipped in paint. Pollock began using this technique in 1947, the year in which he precisely participated in the last exhibition at the Art of this Century gallery.

That same year, Pollock discussed this technique:

My painting doesn't come from the cavalette. Usually, I barely have the fabric before I start, and instead I prefer to place it directly on the wall or on the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the ground is where I feel more comfortable, closer to painting, and with greater capacity to participate in it, as I can walk around the fabric, work from either of its four sides and enter me literally into the picture. This is a method similar to that of the sand painters of the western Indian villages. That's why I'm trying to keep myself out of traditional instruments, like the cavalette, the palette and the brushes. I prefer the sticks, the spatulas and the fluid paint that drips and drains, and even a thick empaste based on sand, ground glass or other matter

In this way, what Pollock captures on the canvas “was not an image, but a fact, an action”.

Other artists

In this same line of action painting, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline worked, with abstract and vigorous paintings, the first of them being another very influential painter in other later authors.

Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) makes more figurative works than Pollock's, being something intermediate between figuration and abstraction, he is gestural and representative at the same time. Beginning in 1946 he painted abstractions of biomorphic figures. His work focused on first representing the male figure, devoting himself, since 1950, to his best-known series, Women. The female figure was identified thanks to enormous breasts, and their aggressive shapes made them symbols of fertility and a nurturing mother, but also of the erotic or man-eating woman. He resorted to intense and vivid primary colors, using black and white to give touches that enhance the figures. His brushstrokes were violent, applying the paint in a totally impulsive way.

Between action painting and color-field painting can be placed the synthesizing work of Franz Kline (1910-1962) and Robert Motherwell (1915-1991).

As far as Franz Kline is concerned, he works with brush strokes. Like Pollock, his chromatic range is reduced, practically monochrome: black, white and bluish grey. He opted for broad black stripes executed with vigorous brushwork on white surfaces. They were enlargements of details from his own drawings. The resulting paintings are reminiscent of those of the informalist Pierre Soulages or of Chinese ideograms.

Black and white are also predominant colors in the work of Robert Motherwell. He sometimes performs works in the form of collage . He moderated the surrealist automatism of his work until he reached an intermediate point between the abstract gesture and figurative fragmentation, his work being a synthesis of action painting and painting of fields of color. His most famous series is the Elegy to the Spanish Republic , begun in 1949 and made up of about 150 paintings; It is inspired by the Spanish Civil War, but not for its political significance, but above all as a metaphor for eroticism and death. He was also a thinker who contributed to spreading the work of the first generation of abstract expressionists.

Action painting was the trend that most influenced the second generation of Abstract Expressionism and many contemporary European painters. Among the Spanish artists, Esteban Vicente and José Guerrero deserve special mention.

Color-field painting

color-field painting or «painting of color fields» is another current within the New York School, anticipating minimalist painting.

Irving Sandler, critic and art historian, proposed to call painting color-field this last alternative to abstract expressionism, focused on color and its expressive possibilities.

It also arose around the year 1947. They created paintings in which wide areas of color dominated, all of them of equal intensity. There are no contrasts of light or colors in his works. Drawing and gesture became simple. In many works they worked with a single color with different shades. They are paintings close to neoplasticism but, unlike it, the areas of color are open, and seem to continue beyond the borders of the painting.

The work of Clyfford Still (1901-1980), Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Barnett Newman (1905-1970) and Enrico Accatino (1920-2007) falls within this trend.

Clyfford Still was another of the artists who worked at the WPA in the 1930s. His style became progressively more abstract. His mature style is dominated by paintings with a black background, which he considered his "favorite non-color". And, on it, some vertical lines of irregular contour appeared, as if they were some kind of flames, of bright colors: yellow, orange or white.

Rothko's artistic career began with biomorphic figures that were intended to express mythical forms, in the early forties. But around 1947 his style underwent a change, focusing on geometrically shaped patches of color, usually two or three horizontal rectangles. They were arranged on the surface of the painting frontally, one above the other symmetrically. The colors, especially those of the rectangles, were bright, the background being more subdued. Rothko created smooth surfaces. The contours are blurred. The impression offered by Rothko's paintings is one of serenity, very different from the anguish and violence of the action painters.

The painting of the fields of color culminates in the work of Barnett Newman, whose work stems from a more radical conception that leads him to be considered within the post-pictorial sensibility and minimalism. His mature style is made up of paintings in which a single, flat and uniform color predominates, interrupted only by one or two thin vertical bands that the author calls & # 34; zips & # 34; . Unlike Rothko's work, in his the color fields have sharp outlines.

Ad Reinhardt (1913-1967) made paintings with rectangles, placed parallel or perpendicular; he used few colors: red, blue, black. He is also considered a precursor of minimalism, or a transitional figure towards this movement. He was especially influential as a theoretician, with writings such as his "Twelve Rules for an Academy" ( Arts News , 1957), attributing to him the expression "less is more" which became in the motto of the minimalists.

Calligraphic painting

A minority current within abstract expressionism is made up of those painters who made the sign the protagonist of their paintings. It would be an intermediate modality between gestural painting and that of color fields, in what could be called "abstract symbolism". Through the sign, the painting is endowed with a gesture, violence and freedom close to action painting. But, at the same time, it served to order the canvas through clear and controlled chromatic zones, which refers to the idea of delicate chromaticism typical of color-field painting. Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1964) is framed within this trend. The content of his paintings came from the unconscious, as a claim inspired by surrealism. His mature work is characterized by an ocher background in which a spherical spot stands out, on top of which there is another of an intense yellow color.

Later development

Abstract Expressionism developed in the United States over the course of about twenty years. Later it spread throughout Europe, Japan and South America. The so-called second expressionist generation is made up of a series of artists, approximately thirty, who reached their maturity in the fifties. Most of them feel the powerful influence of Jackson Pollock. His work spread throughout Europe around 1964. Among them we can cite:

• Norman Bluhm (1921-1999)
• James Brooks (1906-1992)
• Modesto Ciruelos (1908-2002)
• William Congdon (1912-1998)
• Helen Frankenthaler (n. 1928)
• José Guerrero (1914-1991), another American nationalized Spanish. Very influenced by action painting.
• Philip Guston (1913-1980). Follow the line of the action painting.
• Morris Louis (1912-1962)
• Conrad Marca-Relli (1913-2000)
• Knox Martin (n. 1923)
• Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) is undoubtedly the most outstanding painter of this group. He worked large formats, performing trikes and even polyptics. He represented abstract landscapes with a vivid chromatism.
• Kenneth Noland (n. 1924)
• Milton Resnick (1917-2004)
• Theodoros Stamos (1922-1997)
• Hedda Sterne (1910-2011)
• Bradley Walker Tomlin (1899-1955). Organize your pictures in a grid with white or black inscriptions.
• Jack Tworkov (1900-1982)
• Esteban Vicente (1904-2001), American nationalized Spanish. National Art Prize in 1991.

Pollock also influenced artists not directly belonging to this second generation of expressionists, but rather abstract ones: Sam Francis, Grace Hartigan, J.P. Riopelle, P. Soulages, O. Debré and Antonio Saura.

The abstract expressionist movement influenced other pictorial trends such as European informalism and tachism. Action painting, in particular, was highly influential in violent French Tachisme.

It was the main trend in painting until the early 1960s when Pop Art and minimal art emerged (circa 1962-1963). However, some minimalist painters are influenced by abstract expressionism, especially by the color-field painting trend.

CIA funding and political implications

In 1995, former US officials confirmed the rumors that had been circulating for several years according to which the artists of this movement were financed by the US administration through the secret services of the CIA with the purpose of turning it into an ideological weapon of the Western bloc in the context of the Cold War.

This cultural strategy saw in Abstract Expressionism a way of affirming creativity, intellectual freedom and the artistic influence of the United States, making the official art of communist countries, Socialist Realism, seen by contrast as something codified, rigid and closed. Tom Braden, former head of the CIA's international relations department and former executive secretary of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA), stated in an interview: "I thought it was the most important department of the CIA and I believe that it had a decisive role during the Cold War."

This does not mean that Abstract Expressionism was a pure and simple creation of the CIA since the artists could not know where the funds that financed them came from. Former agent Donald Jameson indicates that if the artists had sympathies for communism or the USSR, this favored the operation carried out by the CIA.

This desire on the part of the American leaders to present New York abstraction as the true artistic avant-garde and the new cultural reference materialized through a broad program launched with important financial means by the CIA. Thus was born "an unprecedented system of consecration of art" and the creation of financial value of works in the network, which involved museums, foundations, universities, patrons and various associations. Gallerists such as Leo Castelli and the links he maintained with the management of the Museum of Modern Art were fundamental in this device. British historian Frances Stonor Saunders claims that Abstract Expressionism would not have been recognized and celebrated as it was without the help of the CIA.

According to Michael Kimmelman, critic of the New York Times, the thesis of manipulation by the CIA is reductionist. In an article titled "Revisiting the Revisionists: The Modern, Its Critics and the Cold War", he tries to show that this view is wrong or out of context. According to him, the American abstract expressionist artists were neither more nor less defended than figurative artists, filmmakers or writers of the same era by different governments. Christine Lindey's book, Art in the Cold War, which describes Soviet art of the same period, or Francis Frascina's Pollock and After, reiterate Michael Kimmelman's arguments, emphasizing that the international recognition of American artists intervened in 1964 at the Venice Biennale with Pop art and Robert Rauschenberg.

Recognition that Serge Guilbaut presents as the culmination of the cultural policy carried out by the United States, Pop art replacing all aesthetic propositions with an adherence to the consumer society and reducing art to design. The fusion between abstract expressionism and Pop art led to the birth, at the end of the XX century, of «contemporary art»., a production entirely subject to the laws of the market and animated by "creators" devoid of technical skills and independent of any aesthetic tradition.