ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

Abstract Expressionism was born in America, but soon became the major modern art movement of the 20th Century. The last tenuous links to realistic, (or even recognizable), subjects disappeared as pure abstraction expressed emotion and anarchy. The first American-led art movement turned the tables on the Europeans who had dominated modern art until this time.

Art had migrated from depictions of real life, to interpretations of real life to images from the subconscious mind. However, museum visitors could be overheard saying “I see an eye!” or “That’s an odd-looking guitar.” Now all relationships to real-life objects disintegrated. Art became the subject, the verb and the story. Where the Dada Movement asked “What is art?” the Abstract Expressionists boldly proclaimed, “This is art whether you like it or not.”

To be fair, there was a considerable European influence in the development of Abstract Expressionism. When World War II ended, a flood of European artists entered the United States, fleeing their war-torn homelands. Chagall. Ernst. Leger. Mondrian. It was almost as if they had so much freedom pumped through their veins at one time that they, in a common phrase of the time, “Blew their minds.” Art became an expression of their emotions as it moved a step beyond the subconscious world of the Surrealists.

Although Abstract Expressionism is often broken into a number of smaller movements, including the color field painting of Mark Rothko and the gestural abstraction of Willem de Kooning, we have chosen to consider them all part of Abstract Expressionism since all are characterized abstract images designed to provoke an emotional response.

Clement Greenberg summed up Abstract Expressionism quite well when he said, “Modern art is a quest for art to become with a it is … paint on a surface.” Where the Impressionists started the Modern Movement with their first steps away from well-crafted realism, the Abstract Expressionists were the logical end of the march toward abstraction. For this reason, many art historians consider Abstract Expressionism where modern art ends and Post-Modernism begins.