UMK-Art & Culture: Abstract Expressionism & Colour Field (1940-1980)

“After World War II, the United States emerged as the world's superpower. American companies like Cities Service and Esso, which had once been regional businesses, became international corporations. They adopted abstract names like "Citgo"; and "Exxon" to give themselves world-class status. Since multinational giants couldn't have little pictures of red barns or weeping clowns in the lobbies of their Bauhaus buildings, Abstract Expressionism emerged as the world's most overrated form of interior decoration.” – Brad Holland

“Self-Expression: the crowbar used by artists to pry open the Pandora's Box of self-indulgence for everybody else in society. Fifty years ago, it was the dream of every bohemian artist to be seen getting out of a limousine wearing blue jeans and sneakers. Today, it's the dream of probably half the people in the country.” – Brad Holland

What was it about? What were the goals?
Abstract Expressionism was a controversial new approach to making art. It wasn’t just a style, it was a new art form. Jackson Pollock famously laid his canvases on the ground and dripped paint on them randomly, walking on them, dropping cigarettes on them and stamping them out. In a way, it was a glorification of Surrealist automatic drawing––on a grand scale.
This art was about capturing the spirit of something abstractly. You might not be able to tell what it is by looking, but at least the title should make sense. Jay Meuser said, “It is far better to capture the glorious spirit of the sea than to paint all of its tiny ripples.” This was a radical departure from what most artists had made before (besides Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Franz Kupka, Robert Delaunay…). Many of these artists worked quite large. Rothko wrote:

“I realize that historically the function of painting large pictures is painting something very grandiose and pompous. The reason I paint them, however ... is precisely because I want to be very intimate and human. To paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass. However you paint the larger picture, you are in it. It isn't something you command!”

Fun fact, Rothko denied his paintings were abstract. They were pure emotions. An abstraction is a distortion of a real, tangible object. His works were not, nor were most Abstract Expressionist pieces. And yet, we call him an Abstract Expressionist, and more precisely part of the Color Field subgenre. This included the “circle of Rothko”: Clyfford Still, Barnett Newman, and Adolph Gottlieb.
Rothko, like the other artists in this group didn’t see his work merely in formal aesthetic terms. People will often tell you, if you don’t like a Rothko artwork, stare at it for awhile, and then look away at the white museum wall, and see if you get an after-image. That’s not what he wanted. He said:

“... only in expressing basic human emotions—tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on. And the fact that a lot of people break down and cry when confronted with my pictures shows that I can communicate those basic human emotions ... The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them. And if you, as you say, are moved only by their color relationship, then you miss the point.”

Rothko gave a lecture where he outlined the necessary ingredients for a great artwork. He claimed it must be preoccupied with death for there to be tension. In addition, there should be something witty, ironic, ephemeral, random, and sensual about the work. Finally, it must contain “10% hope to make the tragic concept more endurable.” This is what he, and pretty much all the Abstract Expressionists, attempted to put into their works.

A bit of historical context:
Abstract Expressionism was heavily influenced by the art of Europe, specifically the intense emotional impact of Expressionism combined with all the anti-figurative movements: Suprematism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Cubism, and Futurism. Painting actual things and people had become passé.
Abstract Expressionism got a boost in the media as “the first specifically American art movement to achieve international influence, and put New York City at the center of the western art world.” You could argue that it’s a bit disingenuous to call it an American movement, when so many of the group were born elsewhere (see list below). But, it was America that drew all these artists together, with its combination of wealth and freedom. More importantly, these artists weren’t so much drawn to New York, as fleeing the Nazis before WWII. Anyway, America took the credit, and these artists gained a lot of fame, money, and awards.
Some say this was due to American propaganda, seeking to place itself as the dominant post-WWII culture. Critics were full of praise. Harold Rosenberg said, “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. . . . The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value—political, aesthetic, moral.” These “action paintings” were considered “pure” and “essential.”

The underlying philosophy of the period:
As Rothko explained in his lectures and writings, this art was meant to help people feel, to focus their feelings, re-examine themselves and their actions, and improve – the same Romantic notions we’ve seen in every previous art movement. The recurring theme is always, why can’t we be better?

How was it represented in the other arts – music, architecture, and literature?
While most of these artists painted on canvas, there were also Abstract Expressionist sculptors and photographers. Frank O’Hara was an Abstract Expressionist poet. Robert Frank was an Abstract Expressionist filmmaker, and the movement certainly influenced other famous avant garde filmmakers, such as Ernie Gehr and Brakhage.

Was it great?
No? I mean, in a way? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad they made it, and I’m glad they got so much attention. These artists helped liberate the art world to where an artist can make anything and find credence somewhere in the community. It’s a bit dangerous so far as promoting quality, but as an artist, it allows me to make what I want in peace.
I don’t think it’s fair to denigrate their work as mere decoration, but it’s also not fair to call their works in any way superior to realistic art that covered the same topics in different ways. I don’t think any Abstract Expressionist artwork could ever be more shocking than this, for example:

'Orphaned', by Nikolai Kasatkin, 1891

I’ve heard proponents of Modernism claim that the little details in a work like this detract from the message. Laylah Ali once complained after she’d drawn realistic portraits of her friends wearing nooses – people kept commenting on the beautiful textures of the hair and rope. In that case, I agree. But, with Kasatkin I think the attention to little details––the atmospheric perspective of the hill in the background, the texture of the wood on the grave markers––add to the work. They are what made the works of Salvador Dali so great, because they stick in our mind. They’re visceral, like the way the blood might fly in a violent film. They affect you, and sure, you can reference that indirectly in Abstract Expressionism, but I don’t see the result as any more powerful. Still, it was an experiment, and it has benefited artists in numerous ways – via composition, and so on.

Some leading figures:
Hans Hoffmann (1880-1966) (born in Germany)
Mark Toby (1890-1976)
Dorothy Dehner (1901-1994)
Mark Rothko (1903-1970) (born in Russia)
Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974)
Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) (born in Armenia)
Clyfford Still (1904-1980)
Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988)
Willem De Kooning (1904-1997) (born in the Netherlands)
Barnett Newman (1905-1970)
David Smith (1906-1965)
Herbert Ferber (1906-1991)
Theodore Roszak (1907-1981) (born in Poland)
Lee Krasner (1908-1994)
Franz Kline (1910-1962)
Jay Meuser (1911-1963)
Philip Pavia (1911-2005)
Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010) (born in France)
Jackson Pollack (1912-1956)
Agnes Martin (1912-2004) (born in Canada)
Ibram Lassaw (1913-2003) (born in Russia)
Robert Motherwell (1915-1991)
Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993)
Ellsworth Kelly (1923-2015)

Some of the most famous artworks of the time: