History Of Abstract Expressionism

Experienced in European Modernism and becoming dull to the American Realism popular at the time, Abstract Expressionists became a new type of expression that gave permission to artist to have flow of their own emotion onto the canvas. They accomplished this goal by turning down the traditions of illusionistic painting in favor of their own individual spot. Abstract Expressionists were different from others they expressed their feelings/or emotions straight on a canvas, or by explorations with color, leaving no recognizable images or figuration. Many Abstract Expressionists threw fine art methods out the window by using non-traditional painting techniques. In the painting Number 31 by Jackson Pollock, for example, put his large canvases on the

Abstract Expressionists were all about massive scale. Going for emotional impact, many Abstract Expressionists used dramatic scale to draw viewers into their paintings, as if they were environments. Barnett Newman, for instance, gave explicit instructions for the distance viewers should stand away from his large scale paintings. In so doing, Newman created an experience that could not be taken in all at

For the New York School, as they came to be called, art was personal, and displayed the artist’s own expressive gesture. Though they were considered a group, rather than adhering to a unified, cohesive style, Abstract Expressionists strove to create their own, individualized form of expression. Two Abstract Expressionist groups developed. For Action Painters, such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, art was all about the gesture and the process. No preparatory sketches were made, rather, the art flowed out of the artist’s brush, often by means of non-traditional painting techniques. Color Field painters like Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman created canvas surfaces to evoke emotion and mood through the use of all-over color. With the advent of Abstract Expressionism – Jackson Pollock in particular – art critic Clement Greenberg argued that the art world had finally achieved true modernist painting with Abstract Expressionism’s all-over, flattened image that drew attention to the canvas and the paint itself, rather than portraying illusionistic