Abstract Expressionism: Then and Now

written by Jonathan Goodman | published by Peng Gallery

 

Abstract expressionism is historically regarded as a high moment in American culture—its post-war achievement remains the stuff of legend, of a time when America could do no wrong. Indeed, the triumvirate of its most famous painters—Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Arshile Gorky—coupled with such artists as Franz Kline, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko, provides the public with a sense of accomplishment that is seen as particularly American. There was a tough-guy machismo that pervaded the artworld then in New York, where a sense of pioneering and poetic sacrifice fueled the ambitions of painters who came to the city to paint the sublime as they saw it. Pollock’s extraordinary drip paintings, alongside de Kooning’s impastoed conflations of colors and strokes, represent a focus on both paint and emotion; their work stands as a monumental engagement with the basics of painting as a material, with the honest recognition of painting as a two-dimensional plane, and with the role of the artist as someone inspired by truth.

 

Interestingly, the legendary aspect of these and other New York artists’ works shows that, at least for a moment, the cutting edge of art might support a nation’s imperial sense of self. Abstract expressionism is no doubt a movement that resulted in great art, but its ambition was also linked to the way the country saw itself, as the nation responsible for defeating the Nazis and ending the Second World War. It was an American moment in art and history, and the larger-than-life initiatives taken on by New York painters became genuinely so—mostly because it was supplying the artworld with something truly new: an art that looked to the infinite possibilities of the individual at a time when anything and everything seemed feasible. Intellectual influences were eclectically, but also sincerely, sought; Freudian psychology and Asian mysticism were understood to be answers to the human condition. But primarily abstract impressionism was a triumph of attitude and materials: artists sought the evanescent experience of truth and made sure that their creations reflected the facts of creation, particularly the inherent (as opposed to illusory) aspect of paint.

 

The best times of the abstract expressionist movement lasted not much more than a decade, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, but its influence has gone on to support second and even third generations of painters working in a similar vein. Artists such as Helen Frankenthaler made it clear that the language of the movement was not dead; in fact, contemporary painters such as Louise Fishman continue to work in a style that derives from the work of the artists described above. It may be best to observe abstract expressionism as an agreement of intentions rather than a reliance on a particular style. In search of genuinely new content and obsessed with process, the painters who belong to the movement, also named The New York School, strove and continue to strive for a way of working whose newness would introduce arguments of substance. By promoting emotion over intellect, they speak for intuition, improvisation, and personal vision. As a result, so long as artists look toward innovation and originality, so long as they value meaningfulness and candor, they will continue to seek in ways that reflect a movement originating several generations ago. Sometimes the new is old, and the old is new.