Abstract Expressionism

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Abstract Expressionism

• "Lavender Mist" 1950 by Jackson Pollock.

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What is Abstract Expressionism?

• ABSTRACT
• Non-representative
• Non-Figurative
• - ie. does not show us a window onto the world

• EXPRESSIONISM
• Artists expresses themselves and their emotions
  through colour, line, form
• Canvas becomes
• arena in which to act (Harold Rosenberg)

It is not so much a style as a common approach
Focuses on the PROCESS rather than the
PRODUCT Abstract Expressionism was centred in New
York the New York School
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Art Critic - Harold Rosenberg

• Redefined Abstract Expressionism as Action
  Painting
• The canvas went from
• a space in which to reproduce, re-design,
  analyze or express an object, actual or
  imagined.
• TO
• arena in which to act

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Gestural painters
JACKSON POLLOCKLavender Mist WILLEM DE
KOONING Woman 1
LEE KRASNER Noon 1947
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Colour Field Painters

• Mark Rothko Barnett Newman

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THE ROOTS OF ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISMWhere did
this art movement come from?

• EUROPEAN MODERN ART
• Cubism, Surrealism, Abstraction
• EARLIER AMERICAN ART
• ORIENTAL ART
• MEXICAN MURAL PAINTING

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EUROPEAN ABSTRACT ARTISTS

• Kandinksky Red Yellow Blue
• Paul Klee Dream of Winter

• Cubism e.g Braque
• Flattening of 3D forms onto
• 2 D picture plane

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Hans Hoffman
LEFT Cathedral 1959 BELOW Cataclysm 1945

• German artist who had mixed with Fauves and
  Cubists
• 1931 came to USA
• 1944 One man show at Peggy Guggenheims gallery
• Worked in Cubist style and more expressionist
  style
• Original use of colour
• Energetic line
• Use of paint anticipated Pollocks drip painting

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SURREALISM

• For Surrealist artists, the PROCESS and METHOD
  was very important
• They aimed to express the true function of
  thought by tapping into the unconscious, and
  freeing themselves from reason
• Interest in dreams
• PSYCHIC AUTOMATISM giving expression to the
  unconscious by giving up control of the conscious
  mind. Artist is passive and receptive and lets
  the art / thought flow automatically.

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The Influence of Psychoanalysis

• The Surrealists interest in dreams was
  influenced by Psychoanalysis
• Founder Austrian Sigmund Freud
• KEY IDEAS
• Ego, Superego, Id
• Conscious / Unconscious
• Interpretation of Dreams (book published in 1900)
• Free association
• Transference / projection
• Libido (sexual desire main driving force)
• Repression of painful memories

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ARSHILE GORKY

• IMPORTANT INFLUENCE FOR AB-EX ARTISTS
• Arrived in USA in 1920
• Emotionally fragile, tragic death
• SURREALIST artist
• Used automatism
• BIOMORHPIC FORMS organic, look like body parts,
  or ripe, blossoming fruits
• LINES - curved, convey movement

When something is finished that means its dead,
doesnt it? I believe in everlastingness. I
never finish a painting, I just stop working on
it for a while. (Gorky)
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THE BETROTHAL (GORKY)

• the canvas that confronts us is almost nakedly
  autobiographical. These apparently unspecific
  forms nevertheless speak with great precision
  about what the painter feels and is. We sense
  the painters own masochism from the way in which
  the forms seem to attack each other. Claws and
  tendrils spout from what is apparently soft and
  harmless.
• (E. Lucie-Smith, ART TODAY)

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HOW SURREALISM INFLUENCED ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST
ARTISTS

• Importance of process and method
• Automatism giving up reason / control to free
  the unconscious
• Using art to access the psyche

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Andre Bretons instructions HOW TO PRODUCE A
SURREALIST TEXT

• Have someone bring you writing materials after
  getting settled in a place as favourable as
  possible to your minds concentration on itself.
  Put yourself in the most passive, or receptive
  state you can. Forget about your genius, your
  talents and those of everyone else. Tell
  yourself that literature is the saddest path that
  leads to everything. Write quickly, without a
  preconceived subject, fast enough not to remember
  and not to be tempted to read over what you have
  written.

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Automatic Writing

• a technique used by artists to put themselves in
  touch with their own subconscious.
• Get out a blank piece of paper and a pen/pencil.
• Allow your thoughts and associations to flow out,
  without impediment.
• Do not stop, just keep writing.
• (we will use music to help create a mood, and
  pictures to prompt youbut this would not
  necessarily always be done)
• http//www.youtube.com/watch?voOH3QETdleEfeature
  fvw

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AUTOMATIC WRITING EXERCISE
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JACKSON POLLOCKS AFFINITY with the SURREALIST
APPROACH

• When I am in the painting, Im not aware of what
  Im doing. It is only after a sort of get
  acquainted period that I see what I have been
  about. I have no fears about making changes,
  destroying the image, etc, because the painting
  has a life of its own. It is only when I lose
  contact with the painting that the result is a
  mess.

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INFLUENCE OF EARLIER U.S. ARTISTS Georgia
OKeefe (1920s)

• Large scale abstract paintings based on organic
  forms (flowers, plants) challenged the realist
  style of American art of the time
• Based in New York / New Mexico
• 1956 Retrospective exhibition at MOMA 1st
  ever for woman artist

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Oriental Art

• Chinese Calligraphy influential
• Brush stroke is very important flow of ink
  conveys emotion / meaning
• Use of chinese characters (ideograms) as signs
  that convey meaning
• Influential for artists like Lee Krasner

Ary Stillman
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PRIMITIVE ART

• Artists looked at Native American Indian art and
  Pre-Columbian art
• Robert Matta (Chilean Surrealist) was impt in
  bringing Native American art to the fore
• Belief that Primitive art was more in touch
  with the Unconscious

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Navajo Sand Painting

• Jackson Pollock was fascinated by Mayan symbols
  and Navajo sand painting for its ritual and the
  manner of painting.

Artist work make large gestures and work on the
ground. Symbols took on meanings in the story
/mythology
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MEXICAN MURALISTS

• Los Tres Grandes were Diego Rivera, Jose
  Clemente Orozco and Alfred Siqueiros. All left
  wing Mexican artists who worked in the USA.
• INFLUENTIAL because
• Large scale works
• All worked in a realist style but Orozco drew on
  elements of Surrealism, while Siqueiros was more
  expressionist
• strong, gestural brush strokes conveyed feeling

Siquieros From the Dictatorship to the Revolution
1957
Orozco Advance 1940
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EXISTENTIALISM

• Being is doing
• Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre
• Emerged after Great Depression / WWII time of
  great despair, people felt alienated wondered
  about the meaning of life.
• About finding self and the meaning of life
  through free will, choice, and personal
  responsibility.
• People are searching to find out who and what
  they are throughout life, as they make choices
  based on their experiences, beliefs, and outlook

ABOVE Jean-Paul Satre with wife and
existentialist Simone De Beauvoir.
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Some Key Existentialist ideas

• Humans have free will
• Human nature is chosen through life choices
• By making choices, then having different
  experiences we create our own nature / identity
• A person is best when struggling against their
  individual nature, fighting for life
• A person is best when they are authentic being
  true to themselves, own values
• Decisions are not without stress (angst) and
  consequences .
• Importance of subjective truth
• Personal responsibility and discipline is crucial
  

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How EXISTENTIALISM influenced ARTISTS

• 1. Being is doing focused on the PROCESS
  rather than Product. The Painting was the record
  of the artists actions (and therefore, self).
• 2. Artists would exercise their
• Free will
• Choice
• Authenticity
• In the creation of art works in a process of
  working out their identity and personal truth.
• 3. Existentialism emphasised originality.
  The artist was willing to have descendents but
  not ancestors.
• Bad faith (prior knowledge not personally
  experienced) had to be avoided in art.

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JUNGIAN PSYCHOANALYSIS

• Jackson Pollock in particular was very interested
  in these ideas as he had Jungian psychoanalysis
• Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist follower of
  Sigmund Freud, who developed Analytical
  psychoanalysis
• Believed in the importance of bringing our
  UNCONSCIOUS to the CONSCIOUS realm, developing
  self knowledge.

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JUNGIAN ARCHETYPES

• Archetypes are "the existence of definite forms
  in the psyche which seem to be present always and
  everywhere." Jung
• myths
• symbols
• Characters
• Rituals
• that organise, direct
• inform human behaviour

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Jungian Psychology and Art

• Art as an outlet for frustrated emotion
• Artists can being their subconscious to the
  conscious realm through acting out on the
  canvas.
• Through the process of art-making, artists can
  acquire self-knowledge

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ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISTS believed

• If they emptied their minds of preconceptions
  and applied pigment with a maximum of
  spontaneity, the images they made would be an
  expression of the deepest levels of their beings
  Art became a method of self-realization.
• (Anthony Everitt)