ART HISTORY 4470 Abstract Expressionism: Still, Kline, Motherwell Gottlieb & de Kooning
Clifford Still (1904-1980) • •
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significance: credited w/ laying groundwork for Abstract Expressionism 1938-1942: shift from representational painting to abstraction – earlier than his colleagues, who continued to paint in figurative-surrealist styles well into 1940s aim: to create a transcendental experience – purely visual – impossible to describe w/ words titles: disdained use of – might influence viewer’s experience, as they contemplate sense of infinite that can be found w/in canvas spatial order: flat, anti-illusionistic forms: non-objective – variety of “colors fields” in different formations – less regular than those of Mark Rothko (nebulous rectangles) or Barnett Newman (thin lines on vast fields of color) brushwork: impasto color: dark, gloomy and muted tones w/ strategically placed primaries
Still •
Untitled (1948) – – –
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narrative: lack of title an effort to disassociate specificity scale: soaring composition: “all over” • color fields’ placement to edges implies extension beyond frame • suggests boundlessness color: “fields” • large, uninterrupted tonal areas • interlock on a flat plane • liberated from illusionary design • dispensed w/ typically “beautiful” colors • more disquieting hues (e.g., brown, mustard, and dark crimson) create unsettling impressions • impression that one layer of color has been "torn" off the painting – reveals colors underneath brushwork: visceral • crudely applied w/ palette knives • smears of impasto • seem to spread beyond the canvas motifs: patches of earth tones interpreted as organic shapes
Still •
Untitled (1950) – – – –
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aesthetic: non-objective spatial order: 2-d plays off against and positive/negative space composition: “all over” and dynamic color: “fields” • large, uninterrupted tonal areas • interlock on a flat plane • dispenses w/ typically “beautiful” colors • impression that one layer of color has been "torn" off the painting to reveal colors underneath brushwork: visceral • crudely applied w/ palette knives • smears of impasto • seem to spread beyond the canvas
Still •
Untitled (c. 1950) – – – –
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aesthetic: non-objective composition: “all over” and dynamic spatial order: 2-dimensional color: “fields” • large, uninterrupted tonal areas • interlock on a flat plane • employs “beautiful” colors • hues w/in primary blue creates illusion of negative/positive space brushwork: appears thinner; wash-like
Franz Kline (1910-1962) • •
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training: conventional early work: late 1930s and 1940s – little in common w/ artists associated w/ New York School who, almost w/out exception, interested in Surrealism – cityscapes and landscapes of coal-mining district where he was raised – financial support and friendship of two patrons – received awards in several National Academy of Design Annuals mature work: c. 1950 – wholesale conversion to abstraction • 1949 visit to his friend de Kooning – asked Kline for drawings he always carried in his pockets – projected onto wall, monumentalizing details – scale: large canvases – color scheme: black and white – materials: commercial paint w/ 6” house paint brushes – process: constructed only to look as if painted in a moment of inspiration (relate to Degas)
Kline
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New York, N.Y. (1953) – – – –
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aesthetic: non-objective theme: dynamism of contemporary, urban life materials: cheap commercial house paint on flimsy sheet of paperboard brushwork: “action” painting • built stroke by stroke • suggest full body movement of artist and spontaneity • deliberate, blatant roughness • dramatic, confident, and forceful • incorporates chance splatters, smearing • revised & reworked (“pentimenti”) forms: never flirted w/ figuration; clear open shapes composition: “all-over” spatial order: careful not to suggest figure/ ground relationship between black image and white field • did not see himself as painting black signs on a white ground • “I paint the white as well as the black, and the white is just as important”
Kline’s Buttress (1956)
Robert Motherwell (1915-1991) •
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significance: – youngest and most academically inclined member of Abstract Expressionist group – academic background often cast him in role of intellectual of New York School aim: to allow form to dictate idea, rather than idea dictate form career: – 1937: BA from Stanford – 1938: traveled to Europe for yr study abroad – 1939: first solo show at Raymond Duncan Gallery in Paris – 1940: studied art history @ Columbia Univ. under famed art historian and critic Meyer Schapiro – 1941: became full-time artist – 1941: traveled to Mexico w/ Roberto Matta for six months • after returning to NYC, circle of friends included de Kooning, Hofmann, and Pollock – 1942: included in exhibition “First Papers of Surrealism” – 1944: solo exhibition at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century gallery – 1946: began to associate w/ Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko
Motherwell
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The Little Spanish Prison (1941-44) – – – – – – – – –
title: refers to Spanish Civil War (1936–39) significance: considered this “the first picture in which I hit something deep in my character” aesthetic: non-objective brushwork: “deliberately freehand” process: began by pouring thin, dark pigment on the canvas spatial order: 2-d, flat; anti-illusionistic forms: metaphorical • vertical bands imprisonment • rectangle window composition: “all-over” color: bright palette inspired by recent trip to Mexico
Motherwell
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Elegy to the Spanish Republic (1953) – – –
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scale: monumental theme: societal tragedy title: inspired by refrain in Spanish poet Garcia Lorca’s “Lament” • L executed by Fascists during Spanish Civil War forms: convey meaning metaphorically • “abandonment, desperation and helplessness” (Motherwell) composition: “all-over” • alternating bars and ovals • serve as foil for emotional content brushwork: painterly • reveals drips & “pentimento” • rebellion against compositional regularity color: austerity of monochromes vs. primaries spatial order: anti-illusionistic forms: black symbolically overlaps vibrant vertical bars
Motherwell’s Elegy to the Spanish Republic (1953)
Adolf Gottlieb (1903-1974) • •
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biography: born in NYC training: – 1920: enrolls in Art Students League; studies under John Sloan & attends lectures of Robert Henri – 1923: Parsons School of Design, Art Students League, and Cooper Union career: – 1935: founding member of "The Ten” (group devoted to expressionism & abstraction) – 1936: employed on WPA Federal Art Project – 1937-38: moves to Tucson, AZ – 1941: begins to develop "Pictographs“ – 1942: first “Pictograph” exhibited in 2nd annual exhibition of Fed. of Modern Painters & Sculptors – 1943: founding member of "New York Artist Painters" • group of abstract painters, including Rothko • co-authored letter w/ Rothko, published in NYT – first formal statement of concerns of Abstract Expressionists aim: to reconcile elements of abstraction w/ Jung's notions about archetypes and collective unconscious • idea that all cultures share an intuitive vocabulary of fundamental forms and symbols • symbolize "man's primitive motivations“ process: automatism (see Surrealism) motifs: primal, totemic symbols – eclectic source material from non-Western cultures – resemble pictographs – communicate universal truths to viewer spatial order: 2-dimensional composition: grid-like
Gottlieb
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Man Looking at Woman (1949) –
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composition: grid-like organizing structure • loosely arranged • encloses cryptic symbols motifs: primal, totemic symbols spatial order: 2-dimensional • no use of linear perspective or shadowing to create volumetric forms • each symbol independent and occupies its own space • “at the same time, each motif has proper atmosphere in which to function … in harmony” w/ others color: muted tonalities • slate gray, tan, black, and clay • complimentary primaries & secondaries brushwork: controlled
Gottlieb’s Flotsam at Noon; or Imaginary Landscape (1952)
Gottlieb
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Blast (1957) – –
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motifs: combines primal references spatial order: 2-dimensional • each symbol occupies its own independent space • “at the same time, each motif has proper atmosphere in which to function … in harmony” with the others composition: eliminates grid • vertical orientation (see Eastern art) • loosely arranged along central vertical axis (CVA) color: relate to Russian Constructivism (?) brushwork: gestural
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) •
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biography: born in Rotterdam, Holland – 1916-21: left school at sixteen; apprenticed w/ firm of commercial artists/decorators – 1916-24: Rotterdam Academy of Fine Arts – 1926: arrives illegally in USA – 1927: moves to New York • shares studio w/ Gorky • also friends w/ Stuart Davis, David Smith, Pollock, Kline, and Rothko – 1930s: during Great Depression, worked on Federal Art Project of Works Progress Administration (WPA) – 1943: marries Elaine Marie Fried career: – 1948: first one-man show in NYC • black-and-white enamel compositions – 1948: taught at Black Mountain College (NC) – 1950-51: teaches at Yale School of Art – 1950: one of 17 prominent avant-garde artists to sign open letter to Metropolitan Museum of Art accusing it of hostility towards “advanced art” – retrospective @ MoMA (2011) forms: abstract – “Even abstract shapes must have a likeness”
de Kooning’s Black Friday (1948)
de Kooning •
Excavation (1950) – –
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scale: large (6 ½ x 8 ½ ft.) title: multivalent meaning • cosmopolitan construction sites • archaeological • psychological composition: “all-over” • forms fills every available space w/in confining edges of frame • even, decentralized dispersal of forms forms: anatomically suggestive spatial order: flattened 2-d supremacy of picture plane color: sparing use of primaries, along w/ black and white (see Mondrian) technique: use of newsprint • fragments buried under paint • used to slow drying • did not develop Picasso’s systematic use of iconography & semiotics • anticipates Rauschenberg’s “combines” (c. 1950s)
de Kooning •
Woman (c. 1950) – –
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significance: rather than abandon figure, addresses traditional subject through gestural brushwork process: took unusually long time to create • numerous preliminary studies • repainting the work repeatedly (dozens if not hundreds of times) controversy: attacked by Clement Greenberg figure: grotesque • reverses traditional female representations, which deK summarized as “the idol, the Venus, the nude” • amalgam of female archetypes – Paleolithic – Surrealist woman as destructive force – contemporary pin–up girl • frontal and iconic • voluptuous, massive breasts • facial features – wild–eyed, threatening stare – ferocious, toothy grin form: outlined in black contour • continues in loops and streaks and drips that take on independent life of their own color: vibrant & gray scale
(Left) de Kooning’s Woman (c. 1950 CE) vs. (right) Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf (c. 25,000 BCE)
de Kooning
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Marilyn Monroe (1954) –
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subject matter: corresponds to her appearance in debut issue of Playboy figure: more sensuous than grotesque setting: “no environment” creates ambiguity composition: thematized around figure • permits greater freedom in process of painting than segmented, abstract, anatomical forms • separate structural schemes brushwork: muscular, painterly gestures color: vibrant
de Kooning
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Composition (1955) – –
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aesthetic: non-objective series: Abstract Urban Landscapes • completed while living in downtown NYC (1955-58) • does not represent identifiable urban inhabitants or forms • according to deK, “The landscape is in the Woman and there is Woman in the landscapes” technique: aims to reinforce content • reworked canvases over and over • composite visual traces • scrambled pictorial vocabulary • condensed space brushwork: agitated form: reads as obfuscated Woman setting: “no-environment” composition: “all-over”; no fixed viewpoint color: clashing primaries against secondaries w/ b&w passages