Abstract Expressionism
PAINTINGS AS VEHICLES FOR PASSION
Bold and visually engulfing, Abstract Expressionism was the first homegrown American movement with a worldwide impact. These artists considered art a transcendent aesthetic experience meant to be understood viscerally rather than intellectually.
WHEN & WHERE
c. 1940–1955
New York City, USA
Action or Gestural painting and Color Field painting were the two distinct artistic modes of Abstract Expressionism. Action painting was spontaneous and energetic, concerned with the artist’s physical experience of applying paint to heroically sized canvases. Evidence of the artist’s hand, labor, and emotion are imbedded in the paint as it streaks and drips its way across the canvas. The act of creation was considered as important as a finished work. Color Field painters, who often regarded the artistic process as mystical, meditatively allowed bright colors to consume the vast expanses of their canvases.
Abstract Expressionists were influenced by Surrealism, and the spirit of improvisation in jazz music inspired accidental discoveries in their painting process. The flatness of Piet Mondrian’s paintings was the precursor to the idea that art should not look beyond itself for content.
During World War II, many artists fled Europe’s devastation for New York City, bringing with them Paris’s title as epicenter of the art world. Abstract Expressionism’s nonrepresentational content was apolitical, allowing the movement to flourish despite the oppressive climate of the McCarthy era. The movement eventually gave way to Pop Art, but its legacy lives on in artists that use paint as a vehicle for the passion and tranquility of the unconscious mind. —ARR
Selected artists: Willem de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Adolph Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still