Abstract American Expressionism:
Two modes: gestural abstraction (Action Painting) and chromatic abstraction (also called "Sublime" or "Color Field" painting)
"The Irascibles" (Abstract Expressionists), Life Magazine cover story, 1951
Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko, Richard PousetteDart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne
Post WW II: New York becomes the capital of the art world (left) Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) painting, 1950 (right) Willem de Kooning (190497) painting Woman I, 1951 "Action Painting"
Willem de Kooning, Orestes, 1947 compare (right) Arshile Gorky, biomorphic surrealist cubism, 1936-7
Willem de Kooning making an early study for Woman I, c.1950-1951 (right) Woman I, 1950-2
Willem de Kooning (American, born The Netherlands, 19041997) (left) Woman, 1944, oil and charcoal on canvas, 46 x 32 in. (right) De Kooning, The Painter, 1940
(left) Willem de Kooning, Pink Angels, c. 1945, oil and charcoal on canvas (right) Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, 1618
Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-2 Venus of Willendorf, limestone, painted with ochre, 4 3/4 inches, ca. 25,000 years old
De Kooning, Gotham News, 1955 "Action Painting" Abstract Expressionism
De Kooning, Gotham News, 1955, with detail of upper right Action Painting
De Kooning in studio, Springs, NY, 1960s
Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956) painting in Springs NY studio, 1950 Action Painting American Abstract Expressionism "I believe the easel picture to be a dying form." (Guggenheim Application, 1947)
James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause
8 August 1949 issue of Life magazine: first artist to become a media celebrity
Lee Krasner (American, 1908 -1984) in New York studio, mid-1930s Blue Painting, 1946, oil on canvas, 28 x 36" Met Pollock in 1942; married him in 1945.
Pollock, Going West, 1934-35 ; compare: Thomas Hart Benton, The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, 1934, Oil/tempera/canvas
(left) Pollock, Flame, 1934, and (below left) Naked Man with a Knife, 1938, o/c, 50 x 36" Compare (right) David Alfaro Siqueiros (Mexican, 18961975), Collective Suicide, 1935, enamel on wood with applied sections, 49" x 6` ("Il Duco")
Pollock, Pasiphae, 1943; compare Andr Masson, Pasiphae, 1943 Surrealism (subjective mythos and automatism) and Jungian psychoanalysis: the collective unconscious
Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943, SFMoMA
Pollock, Mural, 19'10" x 8`1", 1943, for Peggy Guggenheim
Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five, 1947, oil on canvas with nails, tacks, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes, matches, etc., 50 7/8 x 30 1/8," MoMA. Partly poured and partly conventionally-painted abstraction.
Hans Namuth, photographs and film stills of Pollock Painting, 1951
Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist),1950, oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas, 7 ft 3 in x 9 ft 10 in, National Gallery of Art
Navajo sand painting, a spiritual / healing practice; compare to "Action Painting": the automatist, performance methods of Jackson Pollock "I feel nearer, more part of the painting. . . . This is akin to the method of Indian sand painters of the West" - Pollock
American Abstract Expressionist Chromatic Expressionism Painters of the Sublime Barnett Newman & Mark Rothko
Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774 -1840), Monk by the Seashore, 1909-10, German Romantic Sublime
Frederick Edwin Church (American, 1826 -1900) Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866 US Transcendentalism, Hudson River School
Barnett Newman (1905-1970), Pagan Void, Oil on canvas, 33 x 38", 1946. Artist destroys all previous works. "The Ideographic Picture"
Barnett Newman, Onement I (1948), 27 1/4 inches by 16 1/4 inches, oil on canvas and oil on masking tape on canvas; (right) Kasimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918, oil on canvas, 79,5 x 79,5 cm.
Barnett Newman Vir Heroicus Sublimus (Man, Heroic, Sublime) 1950-51, o/c, 8 x 18 ft "We are freeing of ourselves the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of Western European painting."
Barnett Newman and an unidentified viewer with Cathedra in Newman's studio, 1958.
Newman, Broken Obelisk, 1971, Rothko Chapel, Houston; designed by Philip Johnson
Mark Rothko (American b. Marcus Rothkowitz, Lithuania 1903 -1970) (left) Self-Portrait, o/c, 32/25", 1936; (right) Entrance to Subway [Subway Scene], o/c, 1938
"Art Must be Tragic and Timeless"
Surrealism and myth Rothko, Omen of the Eagle, 1942
In a 1943 letter to the New York Times co-written with Barnett Newman, Rothko wrote: "It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints, as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess a spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art."
Biomorphic Surrealism and automatism "It was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my purposes....But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it." Rothko, (left) Sea Fantasy, 1946; (right) Untitled, 1944/1945
Rothko, (left) Number 7, 1947-48; (right) No. 17/No. 15 [Multiform],1949
Rothko, Untitled,1949, National Gallery of Art
Rothko, Untitled [Blue, Green, and Brown],1952; Rothko in West 53rd Street Studio 1952
"The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."
Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960, o/c, 9.48 x 9.70 ft, SFMoMA
Rothko Chapel suite of paintings, 1965-66, De Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, 1970
"I wanted to paint both the finite and the infinite.... I was always looking for something more." - Mark Rothko
David Smith (American, 1906 -1965) Smith at "Terminal Iron Works, Boiler-Tube Makers and Ship-Deck." (Brooklyn NYC), iron-welding workshop used as Smith's studio between 1933-1940
David Smith, series of 15 bronze medals inspired by Nazi war medals he had seen in Europe. (top left) Untitled Study, 1939, pencil on paper, 11 in. (top center) Medal for Dishonor: Private Law and Order Leagues, 1939 (right below) Bombing Civilians, 1939, cast bronze, 10 3/4 in. S
Exhibition Catalogue: "Medals for Dishonor by David Smith" Willard Gallery, New York, Novembe...