Abstract Expressionism (1940s–1950s)

Shaped by the legacy of Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism emerged in New York after WWII. It’s often referred to as the
New York School or action painting. These painters and abstract sculptors broke away from what was considered
conventional, and instead used spontaneity and improvisation to create abstract works of art. This included
colossally-scaled works whose size could no longer be accommodated by an easel. Instead, canvases would be placed
directly upon the floor.

Celebrated Abstract Expressionist painters include Jackson Pollock, known for his unique style of drip painting, and Mark
Rothko, whose paintings employed large blocks of color to convey a sense of spirituality.

CHARACTERISTICS
Spontaneity, improvisation, colossally scaled works, unique techniques
LEADING CONTRIBUTORS
Jackson Pollock
Mark Rothko

INFLUENTIAL WORKS
Jackson Pollock - Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950
Mark Rothko - Orange and Yellow, 1956
Supermatism

● Name given by the Russian artist Kasimir Malevich to the abstract art he developed from 1913 characterised by
basic geometric forms, such as circles, squares, lines and rectangles, painted in a limited range of colours.
● Suprematism was one of the key movements of modern art in Russia and was particularly closely associated
with the Revolution.
● After the rise of Stalin from 1924 and the imposition of socialist realism, Malevich’s career languished.
● In his last years before his death in 1935 he painted realist pictures.
● In 1919 the Russian artist El Lissitsky met Malevich and was strongly influenced by suprematism, as was the
Hungarian born Laszlo Moholy-Nagy.
● The first actual exhibition of suprematist paintings was in
December 1915 in St Petersburg, at an exhibition called O.10.
● The exhibition included thirty-five abstract paintings by Kazimir
Malevich, among them the famous black square on a white ground
(Russian Museum, St Petersburg) which headed the list of his works
in the catalogue.
● In 1927 Malevich published his book The Non-Objective World, one
of the most important theoretical documents of abstract art.
● In it he wrote: ‘In the year 1913, trying desperately to free art from
the dead weight of the real world, I took refuge in the form of the
square.’
● Out of the ‘suprematist square’ as he called it, Malevich developed
a whole range of forms including rectangles, triangles and circles
often in intense and beautiful colours.
● These forms are floated against a usually white ground, and the
feeling of colour in space in suprematist painting is a crucial aspect
of it. Kazimir Malevich, Dynamic Suprematism, 1915 or 1916
● Dynamic Suprematism is an abstract oil painting, square in its
proportions, by the Russian artist Kazimir Malevich.
● Pictured against an off-white background, the canvas features
at its centre a large pale blue triangle that is tilted at a slight
angle towards the left of the composition. Painted on top of the
central triangle and congregated around its three points is a
sequence of geometric forms in a range of colours that are
positioned at varying angles.
● Particularly prominent are a small triangle in deep blue towards
the top of the work, a bright yellow rectangle to the right of
centre and a larger cream rectangle just below it.
● This work, which is also known as Supremus 57, consists of a
uniform layer of paint, and seems to have been painted directly
onto the canvas without the artist using any preparatory layers
or drawings.
● Inscribed on the back of the canvas in Latin script are the title
and date of the work, while written in Cyrillic is the artist’s Kazimir Malevich, Dynamic Suprematism, 1915 or 1916
name and ‘Moskva’ (a transliteration of the name of the city of
Moscow).
De Stijl

The International Style

From the end of World War I, a new architectural style developed in Western Europe. Since it apparently originated in
several countries at about the same time, it is known as the International Style.

Holland: De StijI

● In Holland, the International Style of architecture began as the De Stijl (The Style) movement, of which Mondrian was
a founder.
● The primary leader, however, was the artist Theo van Doesburg (1883-1931), whose transformation of a cow into
abstract geometric shapes. Several Dutch architects, attracted by Frank Lloyd Wright's work, joined Mondrian and van
Doesburg in the De Stijl movement.
● They were idealists searching for a universal style that would satisfy human needs through mass production.
● The spiritual goal of world peace, they believed, would also be fostered by the "equilibrium of opposites" that was
part of De Stijl's credo.
Pop Art

● In the late 1950s and 1960s, a reaction against the non- figurative and seemingly subjective character
of Abstract Expressionism took the form of a return to the object.
● The most prominent style to emerge in America in the 1960s was 'Top," although the origins of the
style are to be found in England in the 1950s. The imagery of Pop Art was derived from commercial
sources, the mass media, and everyday life.
● In contrast to Abstract Expressionism — which viewed works of art as revelations of the artist's inner,
unconscious mind — the Pop artists strove for "objectivity" embodied by an imagery of objects.
● The impact of Pop Art was enhanced by the mundane character of the objects selected.
● As a result, Pop Art was regarded by many as an assault on accepted conventions and aesthetic
standards.

Likewise, the widespread incorporation of letters and numbers into the new iconography of Pop Art reflects
the influence of the newspaper collages produced by Picasso and Braque
Pop Art in England : Richard Hamilton

● The small collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different so
appealing? , by the English artist Richard Hamilton (born 1922), was
originally intended for reproduction on a poster.
● It can be considered a visual manifesto of what was to become the Pop Art
movement.
● First exhibited in London in a 1956 show titled "This Is Tomorrow,"
Hamilton's collage inspired an English critic to coin the term "Pop."
● The muscleman in the middle of the room is a conflation of the Classical
Spear Bearer by Polykleitos and the Medici Venus .
● The giant Tootsie Pop directed toward the woman on the couch is at once a
sexual, visual, and verbal pun. Advertising images occur in the sign pointing
to the vacuum hose, the Ford car emblem, and the label on the tin of ham.
Mass- media imagery is explicit in the tape recorder, television set,
newspaper, and movie theater.
● The framed cover of Young Romance magazine reflects popular teenage
reading of the 1950s.
● Despite the iconographic insistence on what was contemporary, however,
Hamilton's collage contains traditional historical references.
● The image of a white-gloved A1 Jolson on
the billboard advertising The Jazz Singer
recalls an earlier era of American
entertainment.
● The old- fashioned portrait on the wall
evokes an artistic past, and the silicon
pinup on the couch is a plasticized version
of the traditional reclining nude.
● Hamilton's detailed attention to the
depiction of objects, especially those
associated with domestic interiors, reveals
his respect for fifteenth- century Flemish
painters, as well as his stated admiration
for Duchamp

Richard Hamilton, just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? 1 956. Collage on paper, 10% X 9% in. (26.0
x 23.5 cm). Kunsthalle, Tubingen, Germany (Collection Zundel). As a guide for subsequent Pop artists, Hamilton compiled a
checklist of Pop Art subject matter: “Popular (designed for a mass audience), transient (short-term solution), expendable (easily
forgotten), low-cost, mass-produced, young (aimed at youth), witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, big business.
Op Art

● Additional art movements that developed during the 1960s, include Op Art, which explored the kinetic effects of
optical illusion.
● Another artistic movement that flourished during the 1960s has been called Optical, or Op, Art.
● In 1965 the Museum of Modern Art contributed to the vogue for the style by including it in an exhibition titled 'The
Responsive Eye."
● But Op Art is akin to Pop Art in rhyme only, for the recognizable object is totally eliminated from Op Art in favor of
geometric abstraction, and the experience is exclusively retinal.
● The Op artists produced kinetic effects using arrangements of color, lines, and shapes, or some combination of these
elements.
● In Aubade (Dawn) of 1975 (fig. 30.15), by the British painter Bridget Riley (born 1931), there are evident affinities
with Albers and the Color Eield painters.
● Riley has arranged pinks, greens, and blues in undulating vertical curves of varying widths, evoking the vibrancy of
dawn itself.
● The changing width of each line, combined with the changing hues, makes her picture plane pulsate with
movement.
Minimalism

● Sculptures of the 1960s ''objectless" movement were called "minimal/' or "primary,"

structures because they were direct statements of solid geometric form, in contrast to
the personalized process of Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism, like Color Field
painting, tries to eliminate all sense of the artist's role in the work, leaving only the
medium for viewers to contemplate.

● There is no reference to narrative or to nature, and no content beyond the medium

itself.

● The impersonal character of Minimalist sculptures is intended to convey the idea that a
work of art is a pure object having only shape and texture in relation to space.
Donald Judd

● Donald Judd (1928-94) is a set of rectangular

"boxes" derived from the solid geometric shapes of
David Smith's Cubi series.
● Judd's boxes, however, do not stand on a pedestal.
● Instead, they hang from the wall. They are made of
galvanized iron and painted with green lacquer,
reflecting the Minimalist preference for industrial
materials.
● Judd has arranged the boxes vertically, with each
one placed exactly above another at regular
intervals, to create a harmonious balance.
● The shadows cast on the wall, which vary according
to the interior lighting, participate in the design.
● They break the monotony of the repeated modules
by forming trapezoids between boxes and between
the lowest box and the floor.
● The shadows also emphasize the vertical character
of the boxes by linking them visually and creating an
impression of a nonstructural pilaster. Donald Judd, Untitled, 1 967. Green lacquer on galvanized iron, each
unit 9 x 40 x 3 1 in. (23 x 102 x 79 cm). Museum of Modern Art, New
York (Helen Achen Bequest and gift of Joseph A. Helman)
Photorealism
● Photorealism, also called Superrealism, American art movement that began in the 1960s, taking photography as its
inspiration.
● Photorealist painters created highly illusionistic images that referred not to nature but to the reproduced image.
● Artists such as Richard Estes, Ralph Goings, Audrey Flack, Robert Bechtle, and Chuck Close attempted to reproduce
what the camera could record.
● Several sculptors, including the Americans Duane Hanson and John De Andrea, were also associated with this
movement. Like the painters, who relied on photographs, the sculptors cast from live models and thereby achieved
a simulated reality.

● Photo-realism grew out of the Pop and Minimalism movements that preceded it.
● Like Pop artists, the Photo-realists were interested in breaking down hierarchies of appropriate subject matter by
including everyday scenes of commercial life—cars, shops, and signage, for example.
● Also like them, the Photo-realists drew from advertising and commercial imagery.
● The Photo-realists’ use of an industrial or mechanical technique such as photography as the foundation for their
work in order to create a detached and impersonal effect also had an affinity with both Pop and Minimalism.
● Yet many saw Photo-realism’s revival of illusionism as a challenge to the pared-down Minimalist aesthetic, and
many perceived the movement as an attack on the important gains that had been made by modern abstract
painting.
Audrey Flack
Audrey Flack is a prominent female artist who rose to
fame during the photorealist movement. She hails
from New York and holds a prestigious B.F.A. from Yale.
Many call her the 'mother of photorealism', and she is
credited for leading the movement.
Flack's paintings are usually of everyday objects like
fruit, women's toiletries, flowers, and knick-knacks.
The most prominent feature of her work is that the
canvas is filled with objects, giving it an odd look. Royal
Flush is one of those famous pieces, which was
completed in 1977. The painting is of a poker card
table overloaded with a cigar, cigarettes, money,
drinks, and a Royal Flush using the red heart cards.
As of 2017, many of her paintings are being displayed
by major museums such as the Solomon R. Energy Apples
Flack, Audrey
Guggenheim Museum and MOMA.
Pointillism
● Pointillism, also called divisionism and chromo-luminarism, in painting, the practice of applying small strokes or
dots of colour to a surface so that from a distance they visually blend together.
● The technique is associated with its inventor, Georges Seurat, and his student, Paul Signac, who both espoused
Neo-Impressionism, a movement that flourished from the late 1880s to the first decade of the 20th century.

● Georges Seurat, (born December 2, 1859, Paris,

A Sunday on La Grande Jatte—1884, oil on canvas
by Georges Seurat, 1884
France—died March 29, 1891, Paris), painter,
founder of the 19th-century French school of
Neo-Impressionism whose technique for
portraying the play of light using tiny
brushstrokes of contrasting colours became
known as Pointillism.
● Using this technique, he created huge
compositions with tiny, detached strokes of
pure colour too small to be distinguished when
looking at the entire work but making his
paintings shimmer with brilliance.
● Works in this style include Une Baignade,
Asnières (1883–84) and A Sunday on La Grande
Jatte—1884 (1884–86).
Avant-Garde

As applied to art, avant-garde means art that is innovatory, introducing or exploring new forms or subject matter.

Avant-garde is originally a French term, meaning in English vanguard or advance guard (the part of an army that goes
forward ahead of the rest). It first appeared with reference to art in France in the first half of the nineteenth century,
and is usually credited to the influential thinker Henri de Saint-Simon, one of the forerunners of socialism. He believed
in the social power of the arts and saw artists, alongside scientists and industrialists, as the leaders of a new society. In
1825 he wrote:

We artists will serve you as an avant-garde, the power of the arts is most immediate: when we want to spread
new ideas we inscribe them on marble or canvas. What a magnificent destiny for the arts is that of exercising a
positive power over society, a true priestly function and of marching in the van [i.e. vanguard] of all the
intellectual faculties!
The beginning of the avant-garde

Avant-garde art can be said to begin in the 1850s with the realism of Gustave Courbet, who was strongly
influenced by early socialist ideas. This was followed by the successive movements of modern art, and the
term avant-garde is more or less synonymous with modern.

Some avant-garde movements such as cubism for example have focused mainly on innovations of form,
others such as futurism, De Stijl or surrealism have had strong social programmes.

The development of the avant-garde

Although the term avant-garde was originally applied to innovative approaches to art making in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is applicable to all art that pushes the boundaries of ideas and
creativity, and is still used today to describe art that is radical or reflects originality of vision.

The notion of the avant-garde enshrines the idea that art should be judged primarily on the quality and
originality of the artist’s vision and ideas.
Postmodernism
Postmodernism can be seen as a reaction against the ideas and values of modernism, as well as a description of the period
that followed modernism's dominance in cultural theory and practice in the early and middle decades of the twentieth
century.

● The term is associated with scepticism, irony and philosophical critiques of the concepts of universal truths and
objective reality.
● The term was first used around 1970. As an art movement postmodernism to some extent defies definition – as there
is no one postmodern style or theory on which it is hinged.
● It embraces many different approaches to art making, and may be said to begin with pop art in the 1960s and to
embrace much of what followed including conceptual art, neo-expressionism, feminist art, and the Young British
Artists of the 1990s.
THE MANY FACES OF POSTMODERNISM

Anti-authoritarian by nature, postmodernism refused to recognise the authority of any single style or definition of what art
should be. It collapsed the distinction between high culture and mass or popular culture, between art and everyday life.
Because postmodernism broke the established rules about style, it introduced a new era of freedom and a sense that
‘anything goes’.

Often funny, tongue-in-cheek or ludicrous; it can be confrontational and controversial, challenging the boundaries of taste;
but most crucially, it reflects a self-awareness of style itself. Often mixing different artistic and popular styles and media,
postmodernist art can also consciously and self-consciously borrow from or ironically comment on a range of styles from
the past.

Jacques Lacan

Jacques Lacan (1901–1981), was a prominent French psychoanalyst and theorist. His ideas had a huge impact on critical
theory in the twentieth century and were particularly influential on post-structuralist philosophy and the development of
postmodernism. Lacan re-examined the psychiatry of Sigmund Freud, giving it a contemporary intellectual significance. He
questioned the conventional boundaries between the rational and irrational by suggesting that the unconscious rather
than being primitive, is just as complex and sophisticated in its structure as the conscious. He proposed that the
unconscious is structured like a language which allows a discourse between the unconscious and conscious and ensures
that the unconscious plays a role in our experience of the world.
 POSTMODERNISM AND MODERNISM
● Postmodernism was a reaction against modernism.
● Modernism was generally based on idealism and a utopian vision of human life and society and
a belief in progress.
● It assumed that certain ultimate universal principles or truths such as those formulated by
religion or science could be used to understand or explain reality.
● Modernist artists experimented with form, technique and processes rather than focusing on
subjects, believing they could find a way of purely reflecting the modern world.
● While modernism was based on idealism and reason, postmodernism was born of scepticism
and a suspicion of reason.
● It challenged the notion that there are universal certainties or truths.
● Postmodern art drew on philosophy of the mid to late twentieth century, and advocated that
individual experience and interpretation of our experience was more concrete than abstract
principles.
● While the modernists championed clarity and simplicity; postmodernism embraced complex and
often contradictory layers of meaning.
Contemporary Art

● The term contemporary art refers to art—namely, painting, sculpture, photography, installation,
performance, and video art—produced today.
● Though seemingly simple, the details surrounding this definition are often a bit fuzzy, as different
individuals' interpretations of “today” may widely and wildly vary.
● Therefore, the exact starting point of the genre is still debated; however, many art historians
consider the late 1960s or early 1970s (the end of modern art, or modernism) to be an adequate
estimate.

Contemporary art simply weeds off the idea of the aesthetics, i.e. the appearance of an artwork. The only
thing that matters in contemporary art is the idea. It is about the conceptualisation and the concerns of
the art.
Contemporary Art (1970–present)
The 1970s marked the beginning of contemporary art, which extends through present day. This period is dominated by
various schools and smaller movements that emerged.

● Postmodernism: In reaction against modernism, artists created works that reflected skepticism, irony, and
philosophical critiques.
● Feminist art: This movement arose in an attempt to transform stereotypes and break the model of a
male-dominated art history.
● Neo Expressionism: Artists sought to revive original aspects of Expressionism and create highly textural, expressive,
large works.
● Street art: Artists such as Keith Haring, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Barry McGee, Banksy, and more created graffiti-like
art on surfaces in public places like sidewalks, buildings, and overpasses.
● The Pictures Generation: Artists Cindy Sherman, Louise Lawler, Gary Simmons, and others who were influenced by
Conceptual and Pop art experimented with recognizable imagery to explore images shaped our perceptions of the
world.
● Appropriation art: This movement focused on the use of images in art with little transformation from their original
form.
● Young British Artists (YBA): This group of London artists were notorious for their willingness to shock audiences
through their imagery, and a willingness to push beyond limits of decency. They’re also known for their zestful,
entrepreneurial spirit.
● Digital art: The advent of the camera lent way to this artistic practice that allowed artists to use the infusion of art
and technology to create with mediums like computers, audio and visual software, sound, and pixels.