8.2 — Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism (late 1940s–1950s) shifted the center of modern art to New York. Artists pursued large scale, improvisation, and personal gesture or expansive color to convey profound emotion and existential intensity after World War II.
Context
Émigré Surrealists, wartime upheaval, and New Deal art networks fostered experimentation. Cold War politics and booming U.S. prosperity positioned the New York School as a cultural force.
Two Broad Tendencies
- Action Painting (Gestural): Emphasis on movement, dripping, sweeping strokes—painting as event.
- Color Field (Chromatic Abstraction): Broad areas of color, staining, and luminous fields that envelop the viewer.
Definition: All-over Painting
A compositional approach without a single focal point; the surface is treated as a continuous field of marks or color.
Key Figures — Action/Gesture
- Jackson Pollock: Drip and pour canvases laid on the floor; “autographic” webs of line.
- Willem de Kooning: Energetic brushwork; “Woman” series merging figuration and abstraction.
- Franz Kline: Bold black-and-white scaffolds of sweeping strokes.
- Lee Krasner: Collaged, reworked surfaces; rhythmic, calligraphic marks.
Key Figures — Color Field
- Mark Rothko: Stacked, hovering rectangles of color generating meditative atmosphere.
- Barnett Newman: “Zips” (vertical bands) articulate vast color planes.
- Clyfford Still: Jagged color expanses suggesting raw, tectonic energy.
- Helen Frankenthaler: Soak-stain technique on unprimed canvas; lyrical color veils.
Definition: Zip
Newman’s term for the vertical band that structures and activates his otherwise broad color fields.
Methods and Materials
- Industrial paints (enamel, house paint), large canvases, and improvised tools (sticks, trowels, turkey basters).
- Canvas on the floor enabled 360-degree access (Pollock); staining avoided brush texture (Frankenthaler).
- Scale: mural-sized works aimed to immerse viewers bodily.
Ideas and Critique
Influenced by Surrealist automatism and existential philosophy, artists framed painting as an arena for being. Critics like Clement Greenberg championed formal purity; Harold Rosenberg emphasized the “event” of painting. Debates over masculinity, market forces, and exclusion of women and artists of color shadowed the movement.
Note: Beyond the Canon
Look also to Norman Lewis’s atmospheric abstractions, Joan Mitchell’s gestural color, Alma Thomas’s radiant mosaics, and Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Nets—works expanding and challenging the AbEx narrative.
Legacy
Abstract Expressionism cemented New York’s prominence and opened pathways to Color Field, Minimalism, and later conceptual practices. Its emphasis on process and surface remains central to contemporary abstraction.
Looking Ahead
Next, Chapter 8.3 surveys postwar European currents—Art Informel, CoBrA, and Gutai—where material experiment, gesture, and performance evolved in parallel and in response to AbEx.