Abstract Expressionism - Who invented it, no-one right?!

Danica · Guest

On American websites, some say the movement of abstract painting started in New York City during the mid-1940s.

O' come on, ....I can help but to think that who ever said this first has watched the Jackson Pollock Movie one to many times. Abstract painting has been around for donkey's years. ami right or wrong who started it? it wasn't New York artists it was artists world-wide? Yes? No? Maybe?

Dani

Brad Buchel · Posted: Sun Jul 03, 2005 6:02 pm Post subject:

I must admit I'm with you Dani. I think people have been expressing themselves with abstract art really since art began... that said though I haven't read the article you did but there was certainly a boom of abstract art being sold in NY which heralded a large following though.

And just for the record, I love much of Jackson Pollack's art. Smile

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Michael Berry · Joined: 27 May 2005 Posts: 5

Let's set the historical record straight re Abstract Expressionism and not mix it up with abstraction per se!

Kandinsky is generally accepted as having created the first purely abstract work around 1910 (excluding of course the dense abstracted linearity etc of eastern art and reverse perspective etc.)

It is also universally acknowledged that all art is abstract as it is not and never can be the real/actual thing and as such is an abstraction from reality.

Abstract Expressionism was a name coined in the 1940's in USA to describe a loose group of artists engaged in challenging the spatial differentiation of the picture plane, the ascertion of self, and for others the denial of self, line as form and vice versa, multiple vanishing points shifting focus, dynamic positive and negative spaces, pictographs, colour field nuances (Rothko) etc etc. And while some of these developments pre-existed in classical art it was not a separate and unique factor - nor had a picture lost its subject and become a subject in itself or as a non-objective space -nor had the autonomous viewer in the picture plane been destroyed before.

Pollock was known as an "action" painter correctly or otherwise - and Abstract Expressionism has strong affinities with Tachisme.

Definitons always present problems and are really only useful to narrow the field so that one can correctly relate and communicate.

The true dilemma is that many still view abstraction as an absence of skill or the privilege of the mindspace personalised and beyond skill and criticism as it is personally owned by the artist.

So abstraction and Abstract Expressionism and Pollock all refer to different aspects of the exploration of the imaginative mindspace and present not the same as the aims of loners like Gorky, Tobey, Matta and Mathieu etc.

Unfortunately a large ignorance still exists in Australia and the greater art world about abstraction as most just painted believing that the visual cues were enough - unfortunately this was to my mind an error leaving in its wake ignorance, misunderstanding and delusions regarding the purpose of pure abstraction regardless of its specified genre.

Regards Michael

hocko · Joined: 10 Aug 2005 Posts: 3 Location: Adelaide

Hi,
Abstract Expressionism was named so then noticeably started in the 1940's,but become popular in the 1950's. Although has been around for quite sometime.Especially seeing Artists like Hans Hoffman whom was born in the late 1800's painting in the pre 1920's right up until he died in 1966.
There has been a heap of quality well known Abstract Expresionism Artists past before us.
My favourite being Hans Hoffman 1880- 1966.,and Mark Rothko 1903-1970.
There is a heap of good info on this at www.artlex.com under the title. of Abstract Expresionism.
cheers

Janus · Joined: 17 Aug 2009 Posts: 4

Interested in this topic as I am venturing into abstract expressionism after doing some hard edge work. I am using Sydney Ball (Sydney) as my inspiration.

Ball is influenced by Pollock and Helen Frankenthaler whose work he saw in NY when he exhibited in the 1960's.

After hard edge I have found the action abstract expressionism very "physical" which is good for loosening up and perhaps shutting the head up for a while as the body gets "into" the painting.

Does anyone else here do this "action" style ?

Abstractmania · Joined: 03 Oct 2009 Posts: 23