Module VII·Article I·~1 min read
Abstract Expressionism: New York After the War
Postwar Art: Abstraction, Pop, and Conceptualism
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New York as the New Center of Art
After World War II, the center of world art shifted from Paris to New York. The reason: most of the European avant-garde emigrated from Nazism (Mondrian, Léger, Dalí, Ernst). This enriched the American artistic environment and gave it new impetus.
Abstract expressionism is the first major American artistic style. Two tendencies: “Action painting” (Pollock) — emphasis on the process of creation; “Color field painting” (Rothko, Newman) — emphasis on the meditative effect of color.
Jackson Pollock — “drip painting”: canvas on the floor, paint is poured and splattered. The artist is “in the painting”, “dancing” around it. “I am nature myself.” This is surrealist “automatism” radicalized: the whole act is the expression of the unconscious.
Rothko: Paint as Emotion
Mark Rothko created huge rectangular fields of color, smoothly flowing into one another. “I do not want to make abstract paintings — I want to convey human emotions directly.”
Rothko Chapel in Houston (1971): fourteen monumental paintings, installed in an octagonal chapel with no confessional affiliation. This is a meditative space. Rothko wanted viewers to cry before his paintings — and many do cry.
The CIA financed abstract expressionism through the Congress for Cultural Freedom — as a demonstration of “free” (subjective, non-commercial) American art versus Soviet socialist realism. The artists were unaware of this. Does this make their art “Cold War art”?
Question for reflection: Rothko wanted his paintings to evoke strong emotions — and many viewers feel exactly that. What is the mechanism: is it an “objective” property of the painting or a “subjective” projection?
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