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Abstract expressionism

Abstract Expressionism in the United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the immediate aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depression and Mexican muralists.[1][2] The term was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates. Key figures in the New York School, which was the epicenter of this movement, included such artists as Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, Norman Lewis, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell and Theodoros Stamos among others.

Not to be confused with Abstract art, Abstract impressionism, or Expressionism.

Years active

Late 1940s–early 1960s

United States, specifically New York City

The movement was not limited to painting but included influential collagists and sculptors, such as David Smith, Louise Nevelson, and others. Abstract Expressionism was notably influenced by the spontaneous and subconscious creation methods of Surrealist artists like André Masson and Max Ernst. Artists associated with the movement combined the emotional intensity of German Expressionism with the radical visual vocabularies of European avant-garde schools like Futurism, the Bauhaus, and Synthetic Cubism.


Abstract Expressionism was seen as rebellious and idiosyncratic, encompassing various artistic styles, and was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the Western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris. Contemporary art critics played a significant role in its development. Critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg promoted the work of artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, in particular Jackson Pollock, through their writings. Rosenberg's concept of the canvas as an "arena in which to act" was pivotal in defining the approach of action painters. The cultural reign of Abstract Expressionism in the United States had diminished by the early 1960s, while the subsequent rejection of the Abstract Expressionist emphasis on individualism led to the development of such movements as Pop art and Minimalism.[3] Throughout the second half of the 20th century, influence of AbEx can be seen in diverse movements in the U.S. and Europe, including Tachisme and Neo-expressionism, among others.


The term "abstract expressionism" is believed to have first been used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm in reference to German Expressionism. Alfred Barr used this term in 1929 to describe works by Wassily Kandinsky.[4]

Abstract expressionism and the Cold War[edit]

Since the mid-1970s it has been argued that the style attracted the attention, in the early 1950s, of the CIA, who saw it as representative of the US as a haven of free thought and free markets, as well as a challenge to both the socialist realist styles prevalent in communist nations and the dominance of the European art markets.[57] The book by Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War—The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters,[58] (published in the UK as Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War) details how the CIA financed and organized the promotion of American abstract expressionists as part of cultural imperialism via the Congress for Cultural Freedom from 1950 to 1967. Notably Robert Motherwell's series Elegy to the Spanish Republic addressed some of those political issues. Tom Braden, founding chief of the CIA's International Organizations Division (IOD) and ex-executive secretary of the Museum of Modern Art said in an interview, "I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War."[59]


Against this revisionist tradition, an essay by Michael Kimmelman, chief art critic of The New York Times, called Revisiting the Revisionists: The Modern, Its Critics and the Cold War, asserts that much of that information concerning what was happening on the American art scene during the 1940s and 50s, as well as the revisionists' interpretation of it, is false or decontextualized.[60] Other books on the subject include Art in the Cold War, by Christine Lindey, which also describes the art of the Soviet Union at the same time, and Pollock and After, edited by Francis Frascina, which reprinted the Kimmelman article.

Richard Stankiewicz, Detail of Figure; 1956; steel, iron, and concrete; in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Richard Stankiewicz, Detail of Figure; 1956; steel, iron, and concrete; in the collection of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Alexander Calder, Red Mobile, 1956, Painted sheet metal and metal rods, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Alexander Calder, Red Mobile, 1956, Painted sheet metal and metal rods, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts

Isamu Noguchi, The Cry, 1959, Kröller-Müller Museum Sculpture Park, Otterlo, Netherlands

Isamu Noguchi, The Cry, 1959, Kröller-Müller Museum Sculpture Park, Otterlo, Netherlands

, by Kurt Vonnegut, is a fictional autobiography written by fictional abstract expressionist Rabo Karabekian.

Bluebeard

(artist whose work reflects abstract expressionist influence in South Asia during the Cold War, especially 'action painting')

Ismail Gulgee

(critic and exhibition organizer important to the dissemination of abstract expressionism in Europe, Japan, and Latin America)

Michel Tapié

Belgrad, Daniel. The Culture of Spontaneity. Improvisation and the Arts in Postwar America , Chicago & London, 1998. ISBN 978-966-359-305-0

University of Chicago Press

Anfam, David. Abstract Expressionism (New York & London: Thames & Hudson, 1990).  0-500-20243-5

ISBN

Craven, David, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.) ISBN 0-521-43415-7

Abstract expressionism as cultural critique: dissent during the McCarthy period

Marika Herskovic, (New York School Press, 2009.) ISBN 978-0-9677994-2-1

American Abstract and Figurative Expressionism: Style Is Timely Art Is Timeless

Marika Herskovic, (New York School Press, 2003.) ISBN 0-9677994-1-4

American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s An Illustrated Survey,

Marika Herskovic, (New York School Press, 2000.) ISBN 0-9677994-0-6

New York School Abstract Expressionists Artists Choice by Artists,

Papanikolas, Theresa and Stephen Salel, Stephen, Abstract Expressionism, Looking East from the Far West, Honolulu Museum of Art, 2017,  9780937426920

ISBN

Serge Guilbaut. How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, , 1983.

University of Chicago Press

. Abstract Expressionism—A World Elsewhere. New York: Haunch of Venison, 2008, Haunchofvenison.com

Anfam, David

. "'American-Type' Painting". In Art and Culture: Critical Essays. Boston: Beacon Press, 1961. 208–29.

Greenberg, Clement

Jachec, Nancy. The Philosophy and Politics of Abstract Expressionism 1940–1960. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 2000  0-521-65154-9

ISBN

O'Connor, Francis V. [exhibition catalogue] (New York, Museum of Modern Art, [1967]) OCLC 165852

Jackson Pollock

The cultural cold war: the CIA and the world of arts and letters (New York: New Press: Distributed by W.W. Norton & Co., 2000) ISBN 1-56584-596-X

Saunders, Frances Stonor

Tapié, Michel. (Paris: Galerie Anderson-Mayer, 1963.) [exhibition catalogue and commentary] OCLC 62515192

Hans Hofmann: peintures 1962 : 23 avril-18 mai 1963.

Tapié, Michel. (Paris, P. Facchetti, 1952) OCLC 30601793

Pollock

Wechsler, Jeffrey (2007). Pathways and Parallels: Roads to Abstract Expressionism. New York: Hollis Taggart Galleries.  978-0-9759954-9-5.

ISBN

Jackson Pollock

Louis Schanker

Philip Guston

Perle Fine

on YouTube

Perle Fine Abstract Expressionism-1950s New York action painter

Albert Kotin

on YouTube

Albert Kotin Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s action painting

James Brooks Abstract Expressionist painter 1906–1992

on YouTube

James Brooks Abstract Expressionism-New York School 1950s action painting

American Abstract Artists

on YouTube

Beginning of the New York School 1950s-Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s

Clyfford Still Museum

on YouTube

Abstract expressionism 1950s-New York School Artists of the 9th St Show Reminisce

on YouTube

9th Street Art Exhibition-abstract expressionist artists reminisce

on YouTube

Nicolas Carone-Abstract Expressionism-Artist of the 9th St. Show

on YouTube

Conrad Marca-Relli Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School collage-painter

on YouTube

Robert Richenburg Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s

on YouTube

Joe Stefanelli Abstract Expressionism 1950s-New York School 1950s

on YouTube

What is Abstract Expressionism?