What Is Abstract Expressionism

Though, throughout this time period, “the great majority of Americans disliked or even despised modern art,” it was an essential art movement in the 1950s and 1960s, and the “CIA fostered and promoted American Abstract Expressionist painting around the world for more than 20 years,” creating a meaningful impact on the outcome of the Cold War (Saunders). “Abstract Expressionism stood for, above all else,

Expressionism was an artistic movement which began in the early 20th Century in Germany, shortly after the first world war. The avant-garde movement was popular in most of Germany, but particularly Berlin. The whole idea of Expressionist art was to show the world from a personal point of view, but though feelings, beliefs and emotions. German Expressionism also had a great desire to be different from what already was. In his war themed etching's (Fig 1) Otto Dix shows emotion through art from a personal point of view, it shows “the horrible realities experienced by someone who was there” (website 1).

Expressionism appeared in poetry and drama in Germany and Austria just before World War I, and was influenced by Freudian Theories of the subconscious and Nietzsche’s anti-rationalism ideas. Expressionism was mostly popular during times of social change or spiritual crisis. This kind of art was a way for people to express their emotions and feelings during a time in the world when they didn’t know any other way to express themselves.

Kandinsky transformed colour into a completely abstract art absolutely divorced from subject matter. The fauvists and expressionists shared an appreciation of the pure and simplified shapes of various examples of primitive art, an enthusiasm that was generated by Gauguin and extended to Picasso, Brancusi, Modigliani, Derain, and others.

Color field painters used a different abstract strategy and focused on controlled shapes rather than a randomized effect. Abstractism in the 1940’s paved the way for Pop Art in the 1950’s by challenging traditional values and definitions of art work. Abstract Expressionism inspired the entire creative community, including sculptors, poets, photographers, and film-makers.

Paul Klee and his works are a direct representation of 20th century art. Klee’s roots in Futurism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Expressionism combined with his natural gift for drawing make him truly one of the most unique abstract artists of his time. Most artists of the time were trying to break away from traditional concrete artwork, however few succeeded with such natural beauty and talent like the simplicity of Klee’s paintings. Klee’s connection to 20th century art can be summed up in one quote by the famous artist: “art does not represent the visible; rather it renders visible (the

The innovative and passionate presence in both Jackson Pollock’s and Wassily Kandinsky avant-garde paintings exemplifies the redefinition of boundaries throughout their art making practices. Both artists challenged traditions both materially and conceptually using innovative and diverse approaches to materials and techniques when painting. Wassily Kandinsky goes against traditions and academies to create vivid, sensual and symbolic large-scale semi abstract expressionist oil paintings in a heightened state of mind. Many artworks of his convey bright and cheerful spontaneous colours that make the audience fully consumed within his works due to hypnotic and distorted semi realist shapes. Consequently, Jackson Pollock also goes against

Art has evolved and regenerated itself many times during our human existence. These differences are defined through changes in styles under various theories. During the nineteenth and early twentieth century, a style known as Expressionism became popular. During this movement the artists were trying to use their artwork as a tool of expression toward life. It was mainly dominant in the nonrepresentational arts, such as abstract visual arts and music. It also was probably one of the most difficult movements to understand because the whole point of the piece lay within the artist. Not only was it a movement, it defined the act of art as a whole. From the beginning of time, each work of art, excluding replicas, show a way of expressing

With that being said, through my surfing of the web, I have found my favorite pieces to be of Erich Heckel, an artist who takes on more of a naturalist road in expressionism while still being a member of Kirchners "The Bridge". A Favorite work of mine being his "Landscape near Dresden", an oil painting expressionism view of the area around Dresden. Characters in this work are created of as little as 2 colors and the houses in the background lack such form that they nearly blend into the yellow sky, and probably would do so if it had not been for the black windows and roofing. For such a lack of structure, expressionist artists have a knack for generating a mood. Whether it be a setting rooted in nostalgia or an act of violence, there is a method to their color madness and rampant strokes that generates an emotion not commonly found in realism or art depicting something in its true likeness. Maybe it is the mass of perceptual variables we are allowed to have within detail that masks the raw feeling found in art, minimalist/expressionist movements strip those unnecessary details and boil it down to an embodiment of what they are trying to

Wassily Kandinsky was a Russian-born artist, whose contributions to the world of modern art are innumerable. On an artistic level, Kandinsky's maturation process from representational art to abstract art is fascinating. From his earliest work, with an impressionistic flair, to his later work, which was pure abstraction, Kandinsky was an innovator and a genius. He bridged the gap between reality painting of earlier decades and the fantasy pastime of the twentieth century.

Mark Rothko- Abstract Expressionist paintings can be divided into two groups. That of the action painters and that of the colour-field painters. As melancholic and misanthropic as Pollok, killing himself in 1970. Understood that to paint a flat form painting destroyed illusion and revealed truth. He was very aware of the spiritual dimensions attainable in abstract art, some of his works being described as deeply religious. (Hugh Honour & Fleming, 1991)

An Old Master’s painting provides for the viewer the possibility of being part of the space created as an illusion of depth by the painters, and this in itself characterizes how these painters found their own different way of challenging painting compared to what it previously used to be, by breaking the limits of painting defined by the medium. And on the contrary, Modernist paintings focusing on the flatness of the pictorial plane give the viewer the possibility to travel through the painting “only with the eye” (experienced by Manet and Impressionist painters). But, Greenberg insists that being self-critical doesn't suggest that leading painting into the extreme abstraction is the answer to Modernist painting (he gives the example of Kandinsky and Mondrian).

, and in contrast to this, the independant wrote, ' It's too focused on the hit it will give its audience. It simply doesn't have enough world in it to be worthwhile art, enough complication, contingency, resistance, negotiation, argument – and abstract art can have these things as much as any other'. THE INDEPENDANT: 2008

The “point and line to plane” (Kandinsky 1979:6) is the painting element, such as the letters that make up the word, different combinations will have different effects. As Kandinsky (1979:12) has demonstrated, that point, line and plane is the basic building material of the artwork itself, and that in every different art the elements of art are certainly different. However, it is necessary to first distinguish the basic elements from the other elements, no artwork does not have these artistic elements. Therefore, the common feature between Wassily Kandinsky’s paintings and Guan Zhong Wu’s paintings are point, line

Modernism has found new expressions in art which in turn have changed how people critic and understand art, in this essay I am going to focus more on abstract expressionism. Debates in this movement have gone as far as influencing many artists and the two well-known critics who have made this movement more remarkable and have changed the art world completely are Clement Greenberg and Ronald Rosenberg. On the writings of these two gentlemen about art I will try to draw out the differences in the idea of what abstract expressionism is and what it is supposed to be, compare and outline the similarities and the differences between the two critics.