During and after World War II, many European artists fled to New York, and a group of American painters there, building on Surrealist automatism, abstraction and American modernism, made huge abstract paintings that seemed to express inner states directly. They were called the Abstract Expressionists, or the New York School. Their works are still in copyright, so they are described here, not shown.
Critics saw two tendencies. Action painting, a term coined by the critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952, stressed the painter's gesture: the canvas as "an arena in which to act." Color field painting spread large areas of color to create a calm, absorbing space.
Looking closely (in words): Autumn Rhythm (Number 30)
Jackson Pollock (1912 to 1956) painted Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) in 1950; it is in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Describe. It is huge, about 2.7 by 5.3 meters (8.75 by 17.25 feet). Over a bare, tan canvas run webs of black, white and brown lines, loops, drips and splatters, from edge to edge, with no center and no object. Analyze. Pollock laid the canvas on the floor and moved around it, pouring and flinging enamel paint from cans, sticks and hardened brushes. The lines vary from thick puddles to whip-thin threads; the black lines make a rhythm over which white and brown are woven. Because the pattern is "all-over," the eye travels without resting. Interpret. The painting is a record of motion, like a dance written in paint, and the title suggests its autumn colors and rhythm. Photographs and a film made by Hans Namuth in 1950 show Pollock at work.
Key idea
Common mistake
Mark Rothko (1903 to 1970) painted large canvases with two or three soft-edged rectangles of color floating one above another on a colored ground, as in No. 61 (Rust and Blue) (1953, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles). He wanted viewers to stand close, so that the color would surround them, and he spoke of the paintings as expressing basic human emotions. Other members of the group included Lee Krasner, who was married to Pollock; Franz Kline, with his huge black-and-white strokes; and Helen Frankenthaler, who in Mountains and Sea (1952) poured thinned paint that soaked into unprimed canvas, a soak-stain method that led to later color field painting.
Why it works
Worked example: Chance or control?
- How thin the paint was, which decides how it flows.
- The speed and height of his movement, which decide line thickness and splatter.
- Which colors, in which order, and when to stop.
Answer: Paint thickness, speed and height of movement, color and order, and when to stop.