Abstract Expressionsim- an introduction

Abstraction Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism is an American art movement that stresses color. Color is the basic element of painting. The Abstract Expressionists, or AB EX painters, were brave enough to abandon the structures of realistic subject matter and focus purely on the relationship of color. There are two major types of Ab Ex art; Motion Painting and Color Field Painting. Jackson Pollock was a motion painter and Rothko is a color field painter. Below are examples of each artist's style of painting. You can enlarge an image by clicking on it.

Ab Ex is important because it was the first American art movement that was distinct and separate from the European art world. The Ab Ex artists like Pollock and Rothko helped put New York on the map. It now is a rival to Paris as capital of the art world. The following article chronicling the story of Ab Ex comes from the book Abstract Art by Anna Moszynska.

Out of the International melting pot of styles that characterized New York during the War years, the first and most celebrated international American art movement was born: Abstract Expressionism. In fact, the movement, which also became know as New York School, contained two separate, if related tendencies: gesture or action painting-- represented notably by Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Willem de Kooning (1904-1997) and Franz Kline (1910-1962)-- and color-field painting, epitomized in the work of Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Barnett Newman (1905-1970) and Clyfford Still (1904-1980). However, the movement was wide-ranging and included many other artists, such as Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell and Philip Guston who do not fit neatly into either category, and despite its name, not all the work was abstract-- nor obviously expressive. Nevertheless, the term Abstract Expressionism serves to identify a period in American art when the overwhelming debt to European modernism was finally overcome. A new vitality and formal inventiveness emerged independently of Paris, and New York moved towards the center of the world's artistic stage.

Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock's work is very kinetic. It stresses the fluidity of the painting medium and addresses the act of painting. Pollock felt that the artist's own reactions to paint being brushed, poured, dripped and rolled across a canvas was much more important than the artifact (the painting) that is left behind.


The image above is a good example of how Pollock focused on the overlapping of color. There are no trees, no houses, nor any subject at all. Color, line and motion become the subject. And these elements are the root of painting.

Gesture Painting
In terms of creating the new American paining, it is Jackson Pollock who has been credited with breaking the ice, With the discovery of new techniques leading to his characteristic drip paintings after 1947, Pollock galvanized American abstraction and produced a painting style that was more direct, improvisational and larger in scale than most European examples hitherto.

Color Field Painting
Rather than being concerned with the gestural trace of paint on canvas, the color-field painters, concentrated on chromatic values and explored the retinal effects of color as opposed to the expressive impact of line. Unlike previous European painting, there tends to be no relation between the separate parts of the composition; instead, the entire surface is uniform and smooth, presenting a 'holistic' field. The unified field of saturated color and the large scale of the canvas mean that the spectator is totally surrounded by the work. A dramatic and even physically affective rapport is set up, in which the extensive canvas surface and the intense color suggest something beyond the physicality of the painting itself. Underpinning the extreme abstraction of the work is a constant desire to convey feeling and meaning.

Rothko
Rothko abandons the dialog about motion and focuses purely on the spiritual effect of color. Examining a Rothko has been liked to Buddhist meditation.These pictures hide a subtle allegory.


The picture above might be seen as a nightscape and right a sunset. But the essence of the work is purely the pleasant visual effect of the juxtaposition of two vibrant colors.