abstract expressionism

Examples of abstract expressionism in the following topics:

• The Development of Abstract Expressionism

  • Abstract expressionism was an American post–World War II art movement.
  • Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of the early 20th century such as Wassily Kandinsky.
  • Abstract expressionism expanded and developed the definitions and possibilities that artists had available in the creation of new works of art.
  • Although Abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York and California.
  • His works, such as The Liver is the Cock's Comb, The Betrothal II, and One Year the Milkweed, immediately prefigured abstract expressionism.

• Art Informel in Europe

  • Popular in the 1940s and 1950s, Art Informel is often considered to be the European equivalent to American abstract expressionism.
  • Popular in the 1940s and 1950s, it is often considered to be the European equivalent to abstract expressionism, although there are stylistic differences (for example, abstract expressionism is often described as being more raw and aggressive than tachisme).
  • Abstract expressionism was a school of painting in the United States that flourished after World War II until the early 1960s.
  • Tachisme is a specific French style of abstract painting under the greater movement of Art Informel.
  • Compare the European postwar movement of Art Informel to American abstract expressionism.

• Color Field Painting

  • Inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists.
  • Encompassing several decades from the mid-20th century through the early 21st century, the history of Color Field painting can be separated into three separate but related generations of painters, commonly grouped into abstract expressionism, post-painterly abstraction, and lyrical abstraction.
  • An important distinction between Color Field painting and abstract expressionism is the paint handling.
  • However, Color Field painting has proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive, albeit in a different way from gestural abstract expressionism.
  • Differentiate Color Field painting from other contemporary abstract art such as Abstract Expressionism

• European Postwar Expressionism

  • One of the biggest contributing factors to this shift was the advent of Abstract Expressionism, a decidedly American movement that is often cited as the first American avant-garde.
  • Visionary figures like Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman epitomized Abstract Expressionism in New York, but a similar concern for Expressionism was present in the work of many important European artists in the aftermath of WWII.
  • Unlike American Expressionism, which was more abstract, many European painters maintained the primacy of the figure in their work.
  • Tachisme is often regarded as the closest European equivalent to American Abstract Expressionism, and can be characterized by spontaneous brushwork, drips and blobs of paint applied directly from a tube, and, occasionally, a scribbling reminiscent of calligraphy.
  • Serge Poliakoff painted in the French tachisme style of Art Informel, an abstract movement which is often considered to be the European counterpart to Abstract Expressionism.

• The New York School

  • It represented, and is often synonymous with, the art movement of Abstract Expressionism, such as the work of Jackson Pollack and Willem de Kooning.
  • A school of painting that flourished after World War II until the early 1960s, Abstract Expressionism is characterized by the view that art is non-representational and chiefly improvisational.
  • Painters, sculptors, and printmakers created art that was termed Action painting, Fluxus, Color Field painting, Hard-edge painting, Pop art, Minimal Art and Lyrical Abstraction, among other styles and movements associated with abstract expressionism.
  • The new Bebop and cool jazz musicians in the 1940s and 1950s (such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Gerry Mulligan) coincided with the New York School and abstract expressionism.
  • Jackson Pollack is known for his techniques in action painting, a style of abstract expressionism in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied.

• Abstract Expressionist Sculpture

  • During the postwar period, many sculptors made work in the prevalent styles of the time: Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Pop Art.
  • While Abstract Expressionism is most closely associated with painting, a number of sculptors were integral to the movement as well.
  • Minimalism during the 1960s and 70s was a reaction against the painterly subjectivity of Abstract Expressionism dominant in the previous decades.
  • We can see this abstraction in such works as "Plug" by Oldenburg.
  • Evaluate how sculpture from 1945-1970 was influenced by abstract expressionism, minimalism, and pop art.

• Post-Painterly Abstraction

  • Embracing clean linearity and open composition, Post-Painterly Abstraction evolved in reaction to Abstract Expressionism in the 50s and 60s.
  • This was a movement in painting that followed and evolved in reaction to the Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s.
  • Greenberg perceived that this new style of painting favored openness and clarity as opposed to the dense, painterly surfaces of Abstract Expressionism.
  • While the Abstract Expressionists were characterized by gestural abstraction and were therefore still concerned with some degree of representation, Greenberg suggested that the formal elements of Post-Painterly Abstraction attained a level of "purity" that revealed the truthfulness of the canvas and the reality of the canvas's two-dimensional space, or flatness.
  • His shaped canvases of the 1960s revolutionized abstract painting.

• New York

  • The New York School (which is most often associated with abstract expressionist painting) was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s and 1960s in New York City.
  • The poets, painters, composers, dancers, and musicians often drew inspiration from Surrealism and the contemporary avant-garde art movements, in particular: action painting, abstract expressionism, Jazz, improvisational theater, experimental music, and the New York art world's vanguard circle.
  • The New York School, which fostered the development of the abstract expressionist style of the 1950s was documented through a series of artists' committee invitational exhibitions commencing with the Ninth Street Art Exhibition in 1951 and followed by consecutive exhibitions through 1957.
  • The Ninth Street Art exhibition was not only a showing of a remarkable amount of work from leading abstract expressionists and notable New York artists, it was also the stepping-out of the post war New York avant-garde.
  • Still was one of the leading figures of the New York School of abstract expressionism.

• Neo-Expressionism

  • Neo-Expressionism is a style of modern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s.
  • Related to American Lyrical Abstraction of the 60s and 70s, the Bay Area Figurative School of the 50s and 60s, the continuation of Abstract Expressionism, New Image Painting, and precedents in Pop painting, Neo-Expressionism developed as a reaction against the conceptual and minimalist art of the 1970s.
  • Neo-Expressionists returned to portraying recognizable objects, such as the human body (though sometimes an abstracted version), in rough and violently emotional ways using vivid colors and color harmonies.
  • Hal Foster stated that Neo-Expressionism was complicit with the conservative cultural politics of the Reagan-Bush era in the U.S..
  • Critique the controversies around Neo-Expressionism related to marketability, celebrity, feminism, and intellectualism.

• Figurative and Abstract Art

  • Artistic independence was advanced during the nineteenth century, resulting in the emergence of abstract art.
  • Three movements which contributed heavily to the development of these styles were Romanticism, Impressionism, and Expressionism.
  • Non-representational art refers to total abstraction, bearing no trace of any reference to anything recognizable.
  • In geometric abstraction, for instance, one is unlikely to find references to naturalistic entities.
  • Figurative art and total abstraction are nearly mutually exclusive, but figurative or representational art often contains at least one element of abstraction.