Visual Analysis on Avant-garde and

Modern Art

Week 07
FA 171Introduction to Art, Design and Culture I
H.H. Arnason et al. eds.
History of Modern Art (7th edition, 2012)

Abstract Expressionism and New American Sculpture,

pp. 377-409

Pollock/CIA relationship: Serge Guilbaut,

How New York Stole The Idea of Modern Art?
What came before American Expressionism (Abstract Expressionism)?
American Regionalism and Socialist Realism

Grant Wood, American Gothic, 1930 Thomas Hart Benton, City Building, from the mural
series America Today, 1930.
Naturalism, Nationalism, Nostalgia
in Socialist Realism and Regionalism
deemed insufficient by the 1950s art
scene to respond the atrocities and
desperation of WWII

Jacob Lawrence, The Shoemaker,

1945
Abstract Expressionism
(commonly known as AbEx and
the New York School)

Conditions of war—a sense of alienation

and a loss of faith in old systems and old
forms of expression—led artists to explore

Existentialism and psychoanalytic theory

(informed by Jung and Freud).

Experiment with individualism.

Nina Leen, The Irascibles, 1951 Life
Magazine New York School
Expressionism, Cubism,
Constructivism, and Surrealism
inspired this change of AbEx, formed
in the early 1950s New York.

George Braque, Pitcher and

Violin, 1909-10
Exchange in the WWII between the
artists working in US and Europeans
lived in exile in NY, St.Louis, where
they got teaching jobs.

Social and economic conditions in

the postwar period allowed American
artists to create radical and
immediate responses.

Paris is not the artistic center of the Duchamp, Boîte-en-valise, 1935-1941

globe anymore and European art
institutions lost their financial power.
Two major wars only in three decades
harmed Europe’s cultural centers,
museums, art collections significantly.

The economic and social attention

had shifted towards New York City,
rendering it the new art capital of the
globe during early 1940’s.
Andre Masson, Battle of Fishes,
Center of gravity in the international 1926.
art world shifted.
By the early 20th century, New York
City become a refuge for progressive
American artists as well as recent
émigrés like Piet Mondrian, Marcel
Duchamp, Andre Masson, and Hans
Hofmann.

The growing international art

population combined with its status
as the financial center of the booming
postwar US economy, made New York
the new capital of modernism. Marcel Duchamp, Mile of String. 1942, New York
As early as 1917Mondrian had said;

“The truly modern artist sees the

metropolis as abstract life given form: it
is closer to him than nature and it will
more easily stir aesthetic emotions in
him”.

Piet Mondrian. Broadway Boogie

Woogie. 1942-43. The Museum of
Modern Art. N.Y.
Geometric Abstraction

Lights of skyscrapers at night were

transformed into a pattern of light
and shadow, blinking and changing.

Mondrian loved the tempo, the

dynamism, of the city—the traffic, the
dance halls, the jazz bands, the
excitement of movement and change

He translated these rhythms into his

late paintings, with the complex
weave of colored lines. Piet Mondrian. Broadway Boogie
Woogie. 1942-43. The Museum of
Modern Art. N.Y.
Hilma af Klint, "Paintings for the Future,"
Guggenheim exhibit, 2018.
Hilma Af Klint podcast - Discussion

● What are the formal qualities of the paintings?

● Overlooked female artist in the AbEx’s history

Origins of Modern Art (The gap between 1910s

to 1940s)

Hilma af Klint, “Group X, No. 1,Altarpiece,” 1915.

Roberto Matta (Chile, 1911)was the one
who introduced the idea of
psychic/spiritual automatism to the
Abstract Expressionists, when he was
based in New York from 1939 to 1948.

Roberto Matta, The Earth Is a Man, 1942

Gestural Painters concerned with the
spontaneous and unique touch of the
artist, their “handwriting,” and the texture
of the paint.

Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and

Franz Kline are the pioneers.

Hans Hofmann, Spring, 1944–45

LIFE Magazine, Pollock Feature, August 1949
Hans Namuth’s photographs for Life Magazine, August 1949
In 1952 Harold Rosenberg’s definition
of “Action Painting”

“At a certain moment, the canvas

began to appear to one American
painter after another as an arena in
which to act—rather than as a space in
which to reproduce, re-design,
analyze or “express” an object, actual
or imagined.
What was to go on the canvas was not
a picture but an event”.

Willem de Koonig, Woman I, 1950-1952

Color Field Painters

Abstract statement in terms of a large,

unified color shape or area.

Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Still,

and Adolph Gottlieb, Motherwell and
Ad Reinhardt.

Mark Rothko, Untitled, 1949.

“The Rothko Chapel”,
a non denominational chapel
in Houston, Texas established in 1971
“In 1940, some of us woke up to find
ourselves without hope—to find that
painting did not really exist….The
awakening had the exaltation of a
revolution. It was that awakening that
inspired the aspiration…to start from
scratch, to paint as if painting never
existed before”.

Barnett Newman, Onement 1,1948.

 Pollock/CIA Relationship: How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art

Conspiracy Theory:

a)A theory that explains an event or set of

circumstances as the result of a secret
plot by usually powerful conspirators

b)A theory asserting that a secret of great

importance is being kept from the public

Propaganda:

The spreading of ideas, information, or

rumor for the purpose of helping or
injuring an institution, a cause, or a
person
America’s image:
“A little rough, certainly heroic,
and suddenly seemingly
unbeatable; but just under the
surface was a crippling
self-doubt”.

Pollock turns out to be an

excellent metaphor for America
after World War II

Jackson Pollock, No. 5,

1948
Cold War (1941-1997)

Two superpowers: The U.S. and the Soviet

Union

- War was never officially declared (“cold” war)

- An ideological war: Communism versus
Capitalism

America’s tools: Art, "Psychological and

cultural warfare"

Propaganda: “What America needed was to

reveal its cultural superiority and it needed the
highest forms of propaganda - it needed fine
art”.
American Art Scene (40’s)

- The freedom of expression

without censorship: artists didn't
have to stick to a state-determined
dictum of what to paint and how
to paint it

Aim: To be the cultural capital of

the world
The CIA found it disturbing that so many of the most
artists and intellectuals in America and across
Europe still found Communism
Some artists were closely aligned with
foreign-born patrons or fellow artists

They were mostly anti-government and

distrusting of it

If an artist was asked to accept governmental

support or promotion of his work, if would not
have been accepted (Left-wing tendencies).
The US government sent hundreds of art
exhibitions to Europe, Latin America,
East Asia between the late 1940s and
through the 1960s.

The money funneled through a new

arts agency created by the CIA, the
Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF)

Museums sponsored and supported by

the CCF, would be presenting the world
of these artists- never the government
“The New American Painting", traveled to
practically every major European city
between 1958 and 1959, practically,
screaming the intellectual and artistic
superiority of the States”.
Outcome:
Inspired by the show, Tate officials wanted
to travel it to London, but they couldn’t
afford the steep fees associated with it.

An American millionaire and apparent art

lover named Julius Fleischmann appeared
and ponied up the funds.

Actually, money funneled through him from

an organization called the Fairfield
Foundation which was actually a secret arm
of the CCF
The CIA deliberately backed the
presentation of Rothko’s works around
the world in order to fight the Cold
War

The Abstract Expressionist painters were

a hugely innovative group

Their works heralded a new way of

making art, of seeing, of abstracting
and illustrating the physical world as
well as one’s internal world.
The
Outcomes:
A little extra money and effort allowed these painters to have their works
exhibited internationally and in high-profile major exhibitions during their
lifetimes.

Censorship: U.S.S.R
Money Funneling: U.S.A
The Outcomes:

Abstract Expressionism is associated with the cultural attitude of

U.S.A wanted to create – made it visible

A year after Jackson Pollock’s death, the Metropolitan Museum of

Art, purchased Pollock’s painting, Autumn, Rhythm for $30,000- a
completely unheard-of sum, particularly by an institution who
almost never supported contemporary artists with art purchases,
(especially not emerging or mid-career artists)
Symbolic
Power:
In the 50s and 60s, wasn't necessarily
- How the art was created
- Who was creating it
- Who was presenting it
- What the legacy might be

Was not an issue!

To the U.S. Government, it was important just to

be seen-- because then its symbolic power could
reach full fruition
Propaganda:

“As long as our artists are free to create with sincerity and
conviction, there will be healthy controversy and progress in
art. How different it is in tyranny. When artists are made the
slaves and tools of the state; when artists become the chief
propagandists of a cause, progress is arrested and creation and
genius are destroyed.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954.