American Abstract Expressionism:Two modes: gestural abstraction (Action Painting)and chromatic abstraction (Color Field Painting)

Willem de Kooning, Orestes, 1947compare (right) Arshile Gorky, biomorphic surrealist cubism, 1936-7

Willem de Kooning making an early study for Woman I, c.1950-1951(right) Woman I, 1950-2

Willem de Kooning (American, born The Netherlands, 1904–1997) (left) Woman, 1944, oil and charcoal on canvas, 46 x 32 in.

(right) De Kooning, The Painter, 1940

(left) Willem de Kooning, Pink Angels, c. 1945, oil and charcoal on canvas(right) Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, 1618

Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-2Venus of Willendorf, limestone, painted with ochre, 4 3/4 inches, ca. 25,000 years old

De Kooning, Gotham News, 1955 “Action Painting” – Abstract Expressionism

De Kooning, Gotham News, 1955, with detail of upper rightAction Painting

De Kooning in studio, Springs, NY, 1960s

Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956) painting in Springs NY studio, 1950Action Painting – American Abstract Expressionism

“I believe the easel picture to be a dying form.” (Guggenheim Application, 1947)

8 August 1949 issue of Life magazine:first artist to become a media celebrity

James Dean inRebel Without aCause

Lee Krasner (American, 1908 -1984) in New York studio, mid-1930sBlue Painting, 1946, oil on canvas, 28 x 36” Met Pollock in 1942; married him in 1945.

Pollock, Going West, 1934-35 ; compare: Thomas Hart Benton, The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, 1934, Oil/tempera/canvas

(left) Pollock, Flame, 1934, and (below left) Naked Man with a Knife, 1938, o/c, 50 x 36” Compare (right) David Alfaro Siqueiros (Mexican, 1896–1975), Collective Suicide,

1935, enamel on wood with applied sections, 49" x 6‘ (“Il Duco”)

Pollock, Pasiphae, 1943; compare André Masson, Pasiphae, 1943Surrealism (subjective mythos and automatism)

and Jungian psychoanalysis: the collective unconscious

Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943, SFMoMA

Pollock, Mural, 19'10" x 8‘1“, 1943, for Peggy Guggenheim

Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five, 1947, oil on canvas with nails, tacks, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes, matches, etc., 50 7/8 x 30 1/8,“ MoMA. Partly poured and partly conventionally-painted abstraction.

Hans Namuth, photographs and film stills of Pollock Painting, 1951

Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist),1950, oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas, 7 ft 3 in x 9 ft 10 in, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Navajo sand painting, a spiritual / healing practice; compare to “Action Painting”: the automatist, performance methods of Jackson Pollock

“I feel nearer, more part of the painting. . . . This is akin to the method of Indian sand painters of the West"

- Pollock

American Abstract ExpressionistPainters of the Sublime

Barnett Newman & Mark Rothko

Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774 -1840), Monk by the Seashore, 1909-10, German Romantic Sublime

Frederick Edwin Church (American, 1826 -1900) Rainy Season in the Tropics, 1866US Transcendentalism, Hudson River School

Barnett Newman (1905-1970), Pagan Void, Oil on canvas, 33 x 38”, 1946. Artist destroys all previous works. “The Ideographic Picture”

Barnett Newman, Onement I (1948), 27 1/4 inches by 16 1/4 inches, oil on canvas and oil on masking tape on canvas; (right) Kasimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White, 1918, oil on canvas, 79,5 x 79,5 cm.

Barnett Newman Vir Heroicus Sublimus (Man, Heroic, Sublime) 1950-51, o/c, 8 x 18 ft

“We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of Western European painting.”

Barnett Newman and an unidentified viewer with Cathedra in Newman's studio, 1958.

Newman, Broken Obelisk, 1971, Rothko Chapel, Houston; designed by Philip Johnson

Mark Rothko (American b. Marcus Rothkowitz, Lithuania 1903 -1970)(left) Self-Portrait, o/c, 32/25”, 1936;

(right) Entrance to Subway [Subway Scene], o/c, 1938

"Art Must be Tragic and Timeless"

Surrealism and myth

Rothko, Omen of the Eagle, 1942

In a 1943 letter to the New York Times co-written with Barnett Newman, Rothko wrote:

“It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints, as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess a spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art."

Biomorphic Surrealism and automatism

"It was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my purposes....But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it.“

Rothko, (left) Sea Fantasy, 1946; (right) Untitled, 1944/1945

Rothko, (left) Number 7, 1947-48; (right) No. 17/No. 15 [Multiform],1949

Rothko, Untitled,1949, National Gallery of Art

Rothko, Untitled [Blue, Green, and Brown],1952; Rothko in West 53rd Street Studio 1952

"The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."

Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960, o/c, 9.48 x 9.70 ft, SFMoMA

Rothko Chapel suite of paintings, 1965-66, De Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, 1970

“I wanted to paint both the finite and the infinite…. I was always looking for something more.”

- Mark Rothko

David Smith (American, 1906 -1965)(right) Smith at Terminal Iron Works (Brooklyn NYC), 1933

David Smith, (top left) Untitled Study, 1939, pencil on paper, 11 in.(top center) Medal for Dishonor: Private Law and Order Leagues, 1939

(right below) Bombing Civilians, 1939, cast bronze, 10 3/4 in.

Catalogue cover

Smith, (left) Jurassic Bird, painted steel, 1945(right top) Specter of Profit, 1946 steel and stainless steel

with (right below) Smith’s notebook sketches from the Museum of Natural History

(left) David Smith, Australia, 1951, painted steel, 6' 7 x 8'12" x 16" (on cinder block base) “Drawing in space”

(right) Julio Gonzalez (Spanish, 1876-1942), Woman Combing Her Hair, 1932; (below center) Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973), Head of a Woman, 1933

David Smith, "drawing in space“ welding, construction, assemblage process Surrealist & Action Painting automatism, spontaneity

(right) Compare Picasso studio, 1912 with constructed guitar (first constructed sculpture)

Compare David Smith with RUSSIAN CONSTRUCTIVIST sculptors(left) Third Obmokhu (student) exhibition, Moscow, 1920

Vladimir Tatlin, Monument to the Third International, model completed in 1920

Smith, Voltri XVII, 196295 in. H

Smith, Hudson River Landscape, detail and two views, 1951“Drawing in Space” (2-D perception?)

Smith, Tanktotems, 1951-2; (center top) Picasso, Bull’s Head, 1943; (center below) photo of tank tops c.1951) – anthropomorphism, found materials assemblage welding

Smith, Zig IV, painted steel, 1963

Voltri series, 1962, 27 welded sculptures in 30 days

David Smith, (left) Cubi XXVII, 1965, 111” H; (center) Cubi XVII, 1963, stainless steel

Detail showing polishedsurface “gesture”

David Smith, Cubi sculpture at NYC Guggenheim, 2006 exhibition

Smith surveying his “personages” at Bolton landing, 1963 Smith died 2 years later in a pickup truck crash.

The “Tragic Generation”