Lecturer Mark Parkin Abstract Impressionism Introduction Abstract Expressionism also known as the New York school emerged in post war America in the 1940s for American artists the ID: 775657
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Abstract ImpressionismLecturer: Mark Parkin
Slide2Abstract Impressionism
Introduction:Abstract Expressionism also known as the New York school emerged in post war America in the 1940’s, for American artists the Great Depression and its relief programs like the Works Progress Administration which gave them the opportunity to develop a painting career. They began searching for ways of responding to the uncertain climate. The two main art movements of the 1930s Regionalism and Social Realism - failed to satisfy their desire for a break with current thinking. American art was influenced by the arrival of numerous modern artist refugees from Europe, whose radical approach to art opened up a series of new possibilities.
Title: Seated Woman (1944)Artist: Willem de Kooning1904-97)Medium: Oil and charcoal on canvasGenre: Semi-abstract Movement/Style: New York SchoolLocation: Metropolitan Museum of Art
Slide3Abstract Impressionism
Brief History
Some Artistic exiles
who settled in America; German-born Hans Hofmann. The Geometrical abstractionist Piet Mondrian. Other influential immigrants included the Dada artist Marcel Duchamp the Surrealists Yves Tanguy, Andre Masson, Max Ernst and Andre Breton. The Surrealist artists were especially influential, with their idea of unconscious 'automatic' painting which was taken up by Jackson Pollock and others.
Black Reflections (1959)Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.A rare colour example of Franz Kline's gestural painting.
Slide4Abstract Impressionism
Brief History
The significance of these migrant artists for the new American movement was acknowledged as early as 1944 by
Jackson Pollock himself: "The fact that good European Moderns are now here is very important for they bring with them an understanding of the problems of modern painting."
Jackson Pollock
Slide5Abstract Impressionism
The Two painting Styles
The "action painters" such as Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning who focused on an intensely expressive style of gestural painting.The more passive "colour-field" painters, notably Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still, who were concerned with reflection and mood.
Image Left; Jackson Pollock Lavender Mist (Number 1) (1950)National Gallery, Washington DC.An example of Pollock'sall-over style of gestural painting,which treats all areas of the canvasequally, rejecting all conventionalpoints of reference or focus. Image Right; Mark RothkoNo. 61 (Rust And Blue) (1953).This is a notable reference to the colour-field paintings of Mark Rothko
Slide6Abstract Impressionism
Action Painting
Jackson Pollock
supported by his wife
Lee Krasner
developed a radical new technique called
“Action Painting”
which involved dripping thinned paint onto raw canvas laid on the ground using wide and rhythmic sweeps of a large and loaded brush
(other tools were also used)
or, more usually direct from the can – this was a
radical approach.
Pollock worked
in a highly
spontaneous improvisatory manner,
famously dancing around the canvas pouring, throwing and dripping paint onto it. By doing this, he claimed to be
channelling his inner impulses
directly onto the canvas, in a form of
automatic or subconscious painting (directly relates to surrealism).
Slide7Abstract Impressionism
Action Painting
Pollock's paintings
eradicated all conventions
of
traditional American art.
The
subject matter
was entirely
abstract,
the scale was huge, and their
iconoclastic production method
became almost as important as the works themselves.
For the Abstract Expressionists, the authenticity of a painting lay in its directness and immediacy of expression:
How the artist conveyed his inner impulses, his unconscious being.
The painting itself became an event, a drama of self-revelation.
Hence the term "action painting".
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Slide8Abstract Impressionism
Colour Field Painting
Evolving later was Colour Field Painting. It’s genesis stemmed from
Josef Albers' Homage to the Square series. Important American artists 1940s and 1950s such as Mark Rothko, Clyfford Stills, Barnett Newman experimented with the use of flat areas or fields of colour to induce contemplation in the viewer - even to a pitch of mystic intensity.
Homage to the Square:
Apparition 1959
Josef Albers
Slide9Abstract Impressionism
Colour Field Painting
Mark Rothko famously said that his paintings should be viewed from a distance of 18 inches, perhaps to dominate the viewer’s field of vision and thus create a feeling of contemplation and transcendence. Some viewers have commented being absorbed into Rothko’s paintings parallel’s itself to a religious experience.
Mark RothkoOrange And Yellow (1956).Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo.
Slide10Abstract Impressionism
Colour Field Painting
The impulse behind Colour Field painting was reflective and cerebral, characterized by simple pictorial imagery designed to create emotional impact. Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, described their desire to achieve the "sublime" rather than the "beautiful." A highly coloured minimalism. Their aimed to liberate the artist from "all constraints of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, and myth that have been the devices of Western European painting."
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Slide11Painting Methodology
Slide12Painting Methodology
Gerhard Richter used innovative abstract techniques in the 1980s. A layer of thin paint was applied then allowed to dry over weeks. Richter’s assistants prepared his oil paint, which was sieved through muslin to remove any last lumps of pigment. Unconventionally Richter worked an oversized squeegee.
Slide13Painting Methodology
The oversized squeegee is a length of Perspex encased in wood, which was moved across or up and down the painting, smearing and unevenly spreading the paint, drowning the careful underneath. This layer dried for a few weeks before another was worked on top. Once tacky he cut out sections of the top layer to reveal the undisturbed under layer. He then worked into the painting with the end of a brush or knife.
Gerhard Richter
,
January
, 1989,
oil on canvas,320x400cm
Saint Louis Art Museum,
Slide14Painting Methodology
Richter
demonstrated his knowledge of the properties of paint, there are very
few drying cracks in such thick painting paint; he layered the paint correctly with slow-drying pigments over fast, using the cardinal rule in painting fat over lean (Proportion of oil in medium is gradually increased as more paint layers are applied).
Slide15Painting Methodology
Barbara Nicholls
applies pools of water colour pigment to paper and allows them to spread and inter-mix naturally, leaving border residues of pigment as they dry, similar in character to the formations found in the geology and maps that interest her.
Slide16Painting Methodology
Quinacridone
& perylene based pigments have light particle weight and therefore spread and inter-mix easily, where as cobalts, for example are heavy and ‘sit’ on the paper. This knowledge of materials allows her to exploit the properties of different pigments to achieve stunning affects in her abstract works.
Slide17Painting Methodology
Bed
is one of
Robert Rauschenberg’s first “combines,” the artist’s term for his technique of attaching found objects such as tires or old furniture, to a traditional canvas support. This particular work, he took a well-worn pillow, sheet, and quilt attached them to a support, scribbled on them with pencil, and splashed them with paint in a style similar to that of Abstract Expressionist drip” painter Jackson Pollock.
Slide18Painting Methodology
Apparently these are
Rauschenberg’s own pillow and blanket,
which he used when he could not afford to buy a new canvas. Hung on the wall like a traditional painting his bed, still made, becomes a sort of intimate self-portrait .Rauschenberg’s assertion that “painting relates to both art and life…[and] I try to act in that gap between the two.”Found Objects; An object - often utilitarian, manufactured, or naturally occurring—that was not originally designed for an artistic purpose, but has been repurposed in an artistic context.
Slide19Painting Methodology
Willem de
Kooning
his painting Woman 1 an abstraction of the female form was dominant in American art. Artists and critics had declared the human figure to be an obsolete subject. Viewers perceived his portrayal of its female subject to be menacing, objectifying, and violent. This was a continuation of his earlier explorations of the human figure and an opportunity to further experiment with the wide-ranging methods of applying paint to canvas.
Willem de
Kooning
Woman, I
(1950–52)
Slide20Painting Methodology
Woman 1
displays of the physical possibilities of paint, ranging from thick to thin, rough to smooth, and
opaque to translucent. De Kooning prepared huge quantities of paint, altering colours and textures continuously during the nearly two years he spent working on the composition. It may appear to be rapidly and intuitively executed, it is the result of many preliminary studies, numerous painting sessions, the scraping down and re-painting of entire sections, and extended consideration by the artist.
Willem de
Kooning
Woman, I
(1950–52)
Slide21Painting Methodology
Franz Kline
began his career as figurative painter but in the late 1940s, he used
a projector to enlarge his drawing of a black rocking chair onto the wall. Intrigued by the way the image appeared abstract when it was enlarged, he decided to dedicate himself to creating large-scale black-on-white abstract works. Kline quoted “I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important.”
ChiefFranz Kline 1950. Oil on canvas, 58 3/8" x 6' 1 1/2" (148.3 x 186.7 cm)
Slide22Painting Methodology
Chief
(a named train that passed through his hometown)
appears spontaneous, but this painting like many of his action paintings was carefully reproduced from a preliminary study. Kline’s works are mostly non-representational seem to suggest through their titles are the stark compositions of the bridges, railroad tracks, and machinery of America. Kline used inexpensive, low-viscosity house paints relates to the artist’s interest in industry and consumerism.
ChiefFranz Kline 1950. Oil on canvas, 58 3/8" x 6' 1 1/2" (148.3 x 186.7 cm)
Slide23Sculpture
Louise
Borgeois 1950. Painted balsa wood, 6' 2 1/2" x 11 5/8" x 11 3/4“ (189.2 x 29.5 x 29.7 cm)
Abstract Expressionism
is often associated with
a revolution in painting
but there are several sculptors which were also influential.
Louise Bourgeois
was born in France in 1911 and relocated to New York in 1938.
She was influenced by
Surrealism’s interest in the mythology and the unconscious
and also
worked alongside Abstract Expressionists.
Her art often deals with themes
related to family, memory, loneliness, and vulnerability.
Slide24Sculpture
Louise
Borgeois Sleeping Figure 1950. Painted balsa wood, 6' 2 1/2" x 11 5/8" x 11 3/4“ (189.2 x 29.5 x 29.7 cm)
The Personages series;
Sleeping Figure
is one of over 80 wooden sculptures she made between 1945 and 1950 to represent the family and friends she had left behind in her native country.
Bourgeois
reduced the human figure
into three long oval shapes, flanked by thin poles, and then unified the shapes with a coat of black paint.
“The look of my figures is abstract, and to the spectator they may not appear to be figures at all. They are the expression, in abstract terms, of emotions and states of awareness.”
Slide25Sculpture
Louise
Nevelson
Sky Cathedral1958. Painted wood, 11' 3 1/2" x 10' 1/4" x 18“ (343.9 x 305.4 x 45.7 cm)
As part of this movement Sculptors challenged traditional conventions of the medium. David Smith made open structures that defied the heavy mass and volume usually associated with sculpture.Louise Nevelson placed her sculptural assemblages against the wall, similar in scale of her painter contemporaries. Sculptors also turned to unconventional and often scavenged materials, as well as less-common processes, such as welding.
Slide26Sculpture
Louise
Nevelson
Sky Cathedral1958. Painted wood, 11' 3 1/2" x 10' 1/4" x 18“ (343.9 x 305.4 x 45.7 cm)
Sky Cathedral consists of wooden boxes stacked against a wall, each compartment filled with wooden scraps including moldings, dowels, spindles, and furniture parts. Nevelson then covered the entire assemblage with black paint, both unifying the composition and obscuring the individual objects. “When I fell in love with black, it contained all colour. It wasn’t a negation of colour. It was an acceptance. Because black encompasses all colours. Black is the most aristocratic colour of all. … You can be quiet and it contains the whole thing.”
Slide27Sculpture
Isamu Noguchi
My Pacific 1942. Driftwood, 41 x 21 x 8 1/4“ (104.1 x 53.3 x 20.9 cm)
Isamu Noguchi was born to a Japanese father and American mother during World War 2, he spent seven months in a Japanese internment camp in Arizona. Noguchi made a series of sculptures from driftwood collected in California and Arizona. He preferred natural materials, such as wood, marble, slate, and bone, carving them into organic forms or leaving them as he found them, then assemble the pieces into a composition that depended on balance to remain upright. “I’m always trying to expand the possibility of sculpture. … To me the essence of sculpture derives very much from the material, you know, the truth of the material.
Slide28Glossary of terms
Assemblages;
three-dimensional work of art made from combinations of materials including
found objects
or non-traditional art materials.
Composition;
The arrangement of the individual elements within a work of art so as to form a unified whole; also used to refer to a work of art, music, or literature, or its structure or organization.
Fat over lean;
Proportion of oil in medium is gradually increased as more paint layers are applied.
Found Objects;
An object - often utilitarian, manufactured, or naturally occurring that was not originally designed for an artistic purpose, but has been
repurposed in an artistic context.
Medium;
The materials used to create a work of art, and the categorization of art based on the materials used (for example, painting [or more specifically, watercolour], drawing, sculpture).
Organic Forms;
Having characteristics of a biological entity, or organism, or developing in the manner of a living thing.
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