EXHIBITION TEXT

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ROOM 1

Introduction

ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONIST NEW YORK

“The modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age finds its own techniques.” —Jackson Pollock

This exhibition explores the movement that catapulted New York City to the centre of the art world and redefined the possibilities of art. In the 1940s, a group of American artists set out to change the face of painting. This generation had just lived through the Great Depression and the horrors of World War II, including the Holocaust and the dropping of the atomic bomb. These acts of barbaric self-destruction threw the concept of modern civilization into question.

The Abstract Expressionists shared the conviction that they must forge a new beginning for art. They sought to invent a style of art that would reassert the highest ideals of humankind, create a new beginning and prove human beings capable of greatness and beauty. Although their painting styles differed widely, the Abstract Expressionists each believed abstract art was a powerful way to communicate personal identity, emotional truth and profound human values.

Wall Panels

THE IRASCIBLES

“The Irascibles” refers to a group of Abstract Expressionist artists who came together in 1950 to write an open letter protesting the conservative nature of art in America. The letter, which criticized the art establishment’s hostility towards “advanced art,” was composed by Adolph Gottlieb, with help from Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko, and was signed by 18 artists. The media-savvy Newman hand-delivered a copy of their letter to The New York Times on a Monday, typically a slow news day.

His strategy paid off as the newspaper ran the letter on its front page the next day. As part of its own coverage of the New York art scene, Life magazine also decided to investigate. In 1951, 15 of the 18 artists assembled for a now iconic photograph accompanying the Life article titled “Irascible Group of Advanced Artists Led Fight Against Show.”

[Image caption:] American abstract artists “The Irascibles”. (Left to right, back to front): Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jimmy Ernst, Jackson

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Pollock, James Brooks, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Theodoros Stamos, Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko.

[Image credit:] Life , 15 January 1951, p. 34. Photo: Nina Leen, Life Magazine, © Time Warner, Inc.

SURREAL INFLUENCE

“Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes.” —Arshile Gorky

Although Abstract Expressionists defined themselves by their desire to create art that was unlike anything that had come before, the influence of Surrealism is undeniable. During the 1940s, the formative years of Abstract Expressionism, New York was home to many renowned avant-garde and Surrealist artists who had fled Europe and the Nazis. Surrealism valued the accidental, the involuntary, the blot, the image that arose from the subconscious. Its artists emphasized spontaneity and an interest in myth and symbols.

Arshile Gorky’s career formed a bridge between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. The last major painter considered a Surrealist, he is also widely acknowledged as one of the first Abstract Expressionists. His deeply personal evocations of the body, landscape and the unconscious paved the way for the radical pure abstraction that was to follow.

[Image caption:] Arshile Gorky smoking a cigarette at Gjon Mili’s studio, 1 January 1940

[Image credit:] Photo by Gjon Mili/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Artwork Texts

Arshile Gorky American (born in Armenia), 1904–1948 Garden in Sochi around 1943 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest. Gorky was referred to as “the godfather” of Abstract Expressionism. His works exemplify the cross-currents of influences (ranging from artistic and cultural to personal) that ran through the New York School. Like many of his peers, Gorky was interested in exploring mythical subject matter in his work. Uniquely, however, he located these themes in his personal history. This painting was inspired by the artist’s childhood memories of his native Armenia. He wrote: “My father had a little garden with a few apple trees which had retired from giving fruit. There was a ground constantly in shade where grew incalculable amounts of wild carrots, and porcupines had made their nests.”

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Arshile Gorky

American (born in Armenia), 1904–1948 The Leaf of the Artichoke Is an Owl 1944 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection Fund. Gorky’s influence over the Abstract Expressionists was immense, yet his works did not share the defining qualities of Abstract Expressionism. They were not fully abstract, were painted on an easel, and were still Surrealist in origin. Gorky was one of many European avant-garde and Surrealist artists living in exile in New York during World War II. Like the Surrealists, Gorky explored spontaneous and automatic gestures in his art. The shapes in this painting encourage free association – a mainstay of Surrealist intellectual activities.

Arshile Gorky American (born in Armenia), 1904–1948 Agony 1947 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. A. Conger Goodyear Fund. This painting’s fiery and intense colour palette was unlike anything Gorky had painted before. It is often understood in relation to a series of traumatic events he experienced at the peak of his career. Beginning in the mid-1940s, his studio burned down, he underwent a colostomy for cancer, he suffered a broken neck and temporary paralysis of his painting arm in a car accident, and his wife left him, taking their children with her. Unable to cope with the physical and emotional agony, Gorky committed suicide in 1948.

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Adolph Gottlieb American, 1903–1974 Voyager’s Return 1946 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger. In search of a new visual vocabulary that broke away from European and American traditions, Gottlieb pioneered a new artistic model in his works beginning in 1941. Now known as “pictographs,” these works aspired to create symbols that could transcend time and place. Gottlieb derived his inspiration from sources as diverse as classical mythology, Oceanic, Melanesian, Native American and African visual cultures, as well as modern psychoanalytic theory, art and literature. Often featuring boxlike structures or grids, his invented forms were meant to express the spirit of language without literally constituting it.

Adolph Gottlieb

American, 1903–1974 Man Looking at Woman 1949 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist. “I frequently hear the question, ‘What do these images mean?’ That is simply the wrong question. Visual images do not have to conform to either verbal thinking or optical facts. A better question would be: ‘Do these images convey any emotional truth?’”

In the 1940s Gottlieb began to emulate the art of early Native American and Middle Eastern cultures. His explorations inspired “pictograph” paintings such as this one, which features hieroglyphic-like script in a series of boxes. Gottlieb deliberately avoided using decipherable signs. Like many Abstract Expressionists, he strived to include symbols and meanings in his work that could be understood by anyone of any time.

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Room 2

Wall Panel

CAMARADERIE AND COMPETITION: THE CLUB, 1949–1962

“The Club came along at just the right time. It was so important, getting together, arguing, thinking.” —Willem de Kooning

In the late 1940s, in search of coffee and companionship, a small group of artists led by close friends Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline set up a meeting place which they cheekily called “The Club.” De Kooning, never forgetting his working-class roots in Rotterdam’s docklands, felt a profound solidarity with artists, society’s outsiders. Ironically, this gathering of outsiders in a grubby loft in Greenwich Village became the intellectual centre of the new painting and the site of hotly contested aesthetic debates.

While the actual artmaking happened in artists’ studios, discussions at The Club shaped how artists, critics and the public talked and thought about abstract art. At its height in the early 1950s, The Club boasted as many as 150 dues-paying members. Most significant New York-based artists, gallery owners, critics and curators passed through its doors, making it a vital part in the emergence and development of Abstract Expressionism.

[Image caption:] Abstract Expressionist painter Willem de Kooning in his New York City studio, 25 May 1959

[Image credit:] Photo by Arnold Newman/Getty Images

Artwork Texts

Willem de Kooning American (born in The Netherlands), 1904–1997 Painting 1948 enamel and oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. De Kooning was one of the leaders of Abstract Expressionism and close friends with many of its artists. Early in his career, he shared a studio with Arshile Gorky, whose Surrealist style influenced de Kooning’s early images. However, the gestural paintings of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline inspired him to do his first black and white abstract works in 1946. The figure was never, however, far from his mind. “Even abstract shapes must have a likeness,” he once said. If you let your eyes linger on these black and white forms, what do they resemble?

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Willem de Kooning

American (born in The Netherlands), 1904–1997 Woman I 1950–1952 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. De Kooning famously said, “Flesh is the reason oil paint was invented.” Although he created many abstract paintings in the late 1940s, he continually returned to the figure, specifically the motif of the woman. He wrestled with this painting for months, making numerous preliminary studies, repainting the canvas repeatedly, and at times completely abandoning it. He may have been anticipating the skepticism that greeted his revival of figure painting at a time when abstraction dominated the burgeoning New York art scene.

Willem de Kooning American (born in The Netherlands), 1904–1997 A Tree in Naples 1960 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection. This work is part of a group of abstract paintings inspired by the landscape. De Kooning uses a few powerful, expansive brush strokes to evoke the vistas of colour found in the natural world. Describing the experience that inspired these works, he said, “Just coming around roads, some place, and having the sensation of a piece of it, a piece of nature, like a fence, something on the road.… And I really get very elated by again looking, by again seeing that the sky is blue, that the grass is green.”

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Room 3

Wall Panels

THE LANDSCAPE OF ABEX: COUNTRY VERSUS CITY

“A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. It’s an immediate image.” —Helen Frankenthaler

Although Abstract Expressionism is closely linked to the urban environs of New York, the American landscape still played an influential role in the artistic consciousness. Many abstract artists worked in close proximity to nature. Rothko, Newman, Motherwell and Frankenthaler all spent numerous summers in rural and seaside towns outside the city. Pollock and his artist wife Lee Krasner moved to a farmhouse in pastoral Long Island in 1945, and both Clyfford Still and Willem de Kooning also retreated from the city to paint in rural settings. The vast surfaces that define Abstract Expressionist painting evoke the beauty and complexity of the natural world, expanding the tradition of American landscape painting.

[Image caption:] Abstract and expressionist artist Helen Frankenthaler tips the contents of a can of paint onto a canvas on the floor, 1969.

[Image credit:] Photo by Ernst Haas/Getty Images

ABEX AND PHOTOGRAPHY

“Black and white are the colours of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.” —Robert Frank

Like the Abstract Expressionist painters, photographers such as Aaron Siskind, Robert Frank, Harry Callahan and Rudy Burckhardt sought to break with tradition and forge a new path for their medium. The works of Frank and Burckhardt provide an insider’s glimpse into the downtown Manhattan scene during the 1940s, a decade central to the development of postwar American art. Siskind and Callahan, on the other hand, broke away from representing a recognizable physical object. They focused instead on the interaction of shapes, textures and tones (in an almost painterly manner), creating expressive abstract compositions.

[Image caption:] Robert Frank, New York, around 1947–1948

[Image credit:] Photographer: Ronny Jacques

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Artwork Texts

Helen Frankenthaler American, born 1928 Jacob’s Ladder 1957 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Hyman N. Glickstein. As a young New York artist in the 1950s, Frankenthaler was very much inspired by the Abstract Expressionists. Influential art critic Clement Greenberg recommended she spend her summer studying with Hans Hofmann in Provincetown, Massachusetts. It was there that she met her future husband, Abstract Expressionist artist Robert Motherwell. Like Jackson Pollock, Frankenthaler laid her canvases on the floor to paint them, experimenting with new possibilities of handling paint. She uniquely poured and moved thinned paint, creating areas of colour that soaked into unprimed canvases. This would become her signature style: the stain painting.

Clyfford Still American, 1904–1980 1944–N, No. 2 1944 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. The Sidney and Harriet Janis Collection. Clyfford Still developed his abstract painting style in relative isolation, working alone in San Francisco in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Still’s shift from representational painting to abstraction occurred between 1938 and 1942, earlier than his New York colleagues who were still painting in figurative-surrealist styles, including Jackson Pollock. Considered by many to be the most anti-traditional of the Abstract Expressionists, Still is credited with laying the groundwork for the movement. He sought to create a new kind of abstraction that was free from decipherable symbols and, by extension, the dominating legacy of European art.

Clyfford Still American, 1904–1980 1951–T, No. 3 1951 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Blanchette Hooker Rockefeller Fund.

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Still moved to New York in 1945 at the request of his friend Mark Rothko, and lived there during the 1950s, at the height of Abstract Expressionism. This was also a time when he became increasingly critical of the art world. He was fervently anti-establishment and despised what he called “the gutter-club vermin” of the art world, including The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Still severed ties with his New York gallerists and moved to Maryland in 1960 in an attempt to distance himself from the commercial art world.

Aaron Siskind Photographs

Often called the father of modern photography, Siskind abandoned the idea that a photograph is a reflection of the world. Directing his lens toward torn billboards, deteriorating walls, rocks and textured surfaces, he created images that could be viewed as Abstract Expressionist paintings. This is no coincidence. Among Siskind’s closest friends were Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman. Reflecting on these images, Siskind explained, “For the first time in my life, subject matter, as such, had ceased to be of primary importance. Instead, I found myself involved in the relationships of these objects, so much so that these pictures turned out to be deeply moving and personal experiences.”

Robert Frank Photographs

The photographs of Robert Frank convey a sparse yet focused urban environment. Like his Abstract Expressionist friends Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, his black and white tones conjure a belief in the power of the creative act. Frank was also closely associated with the Beat Generation. His landmark photography book Les Américains (The Americans), a collection of provocative images of “American-ness”, featured an introduction by Jack Kerouac. His first film, Pull My Daisy, was narrated by Kerouac and starred Allen Ginsberg. In 1970 he moved to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, where he still lives today.

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Room 4

Wall Panel

DRAWING AND SCULPTURE

“An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.” —Louise Bourgeois

From the 1940s through the 1960s, Abstract Expressionism in New York extended into a wide variety of mediums. In addition to painting, this gallery features sculpture and works on paper from artists who moved in Abstract Expressionist circles. Like the painting of the time, these works share a strong association with pre-modern art, the subconscious and mythology, and demonstrate vigorous physicality and gestural composition.

The styles of these works on paper vary as much as their painting counterparts. You encounter everything from Bourgeois’s suggestive intimate drawings to Motherwell’s blotted poetic elegy, from David Smith’s primordial figures to Noguchi’s pragmatic work sheets. Displayed together, the works reveal the artists’ creative processes and showcase the robust range of work produced during this period.

Artwork Texts

Louise Bourgeois American (born in France), 1911–2010 Sleeping Figure II 1959 bronze The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. In 1938 Louise Bourgeois moved from France to New York, where she came into contact with a number of the European Surrealist artists who had taken refuge in the United States during World War II. Surrealism – with its biomorphic forms and totemic figures – was just one of many inspirations for Bourgeois. She also made use of her own biography to address larger themes of motherhood, femininity and sexuality. <i>Sleeping Figure II<i> is part of a group of more than 80 totemic works originally carved in wood known as “Personages.” Louise Bourgeois American (born in France), 1911–2010 Throbbing Pulse 1944 ink on paper The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist.

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Bourgeois abandoned her mathematics studies in Paris in 1938 to pursue art in New York. She befriended expatriate Surrealists, embracing the eccentric forms in their work. Over a career that spanned seven decades, Bourgeois returned to certain motifs and themes across a huge variety of mediums. In these works on paper, you’ll see references to bodies, hair and plant forms. They appear abstract but also evoke the body. She titled many of her abstract forms with attributes of energy, including the works on display here – for example, “throb”, “hang” (<i>Hanging Weeds<i>) and “ascend” (<i>Slow Ascent<i>). Norman Lewis American, 1909–1979 City Night 1949 oil on wood panel The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Marie-Josée and Henry R. Kravis. Lewis’s painting, like the work of many Abstract Expressionists, straddles the boundary between abstraction and figuration. The predominantly dark palette of this work evokes the nocturnal cityscape of its title. Twin columns of luminous colour appear to hover over a deep, black expanse, while delicate lines crisscross its surface (perhaps laundry or power lines). Here Lewis has transformed this commonplace scene into an atmospheric and luminous abstraction. “The elements of painting constitute a language in themselves,” the artist wrote in 1949. Isamu Noguchi American, 1904–1988 My Pacific (Polynesian Culture) 1942 driftwood The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Florene May Schoenborn Bequest. “To me the essence of sculpture derives very much from the material, you know, the truth of the material.” – Isamu Noguchi Noguchi spent his lifetime grappling with his dual identity. His father was Japanese, while his mother was American, and he had lived part of his life in each country. During World War II, he voluntarily entered an internment camp in Arizona for Japanese Americans in hopes of organizing an arts and crafts guild for detainees. Noguchi often looked to natural materials rather than limiting himself to industrially produced ones. He created this sculpture after his time in the camp, using driftwood he had collected in Arizona and California. Richard Pousette-Dart

American, 1916–1992

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Fugue Number 2 1943 oil and sand on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Given anonymously. This work features heavily outlined circles and fantastic shapes that suggest ancient or totemic forms. Pousette-Dart was interested in Asian philosophy (especially Zen Buddhism, Taoism and Hinduism’s Bhagavad-Gita) as well as the mythology and visual language of the African, Pre-Columbian, Oceanic and North American Aboriginal cultures. He spoke of his art in spiritual terms, but didn’t subscribe to any one particular religion. “I strive to express the spiritual nature of the Universe,” he said. “Painting is for me a dynamic balance and wholeness of life; it is mysterious and transcending, yet solid and real.” David Smith American, 1906–1965 History of LeRoy Borton February 17, 1956 steel The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. This steel sculpture was named after LeRoy Borton, a blacksmith who had helped Smith power forge a series of sculptures the previous year. “Borton’s interest in my work was more than that of the subcontracting of man and machine,” Smith said. “He was an excellent craftsman developed in the old school of hard forging, tempering of chisels, wagon repair, etc. In the days we worked together we became friendly, talking of metalworking methods, etc…. History of LeRoy Borton is an homage to a friend.” Lee Krasner

American, 1908–1984 Untitled 1949 oil on composition board The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Alfonso A. Ossorio. For many years, Krasner was best known as the wife of Jackson Pollock. She was a tireless promoter and manager of his career. But she was also a painter. This work is part of Krasner’s <i>Little Image<i> series. She applied thick paint – sometimes directly from the tube – in rhythmic and repetitive strokes. Like many of her artist peers in the 1940s, Krasner invented a language of private symbols inspired by hieroglyphics. Her symbols embody a spirit of language on which you can impart your own meaning. Lee Krasner American, 1908–1984

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Gaea 1966 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Kay Sage Tanguy Fund. Krasner reinvented her artistic style many times during her lengthy and distinguished career. She struggled with the public’s reception of her identity, both as a woman and as the wife of Jackson Pollock. She often signed her works with a genderless “L.K.” In the mid-1960s her work took on a spirit of free invention, like this painting named after the ancient Greek goddess of the Earth. Her broad, sweeping strokes of paint were quite different from her earlier works. Krasner also rejected the notion that her painting was devoid of content – she declared that she “wouldn’t dream of” creating a painting from a solely abstract idea.

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Room 5

Wall Panels

ABEX AND THE SIGNATURE STYLE

“I paint not the things I see but the feelings they arouse in me.”

—Franz Kline

The Abstract Expressionist movement encompasses a huge variety of abstract painting styles, embodying the American emphasis on self-reliance and individuality. The horrors of World War II had inspired intense self-reflection, and the paintings in this exhibition represent personal explorations of identity and the search for an understanding of one’s place in the world. Despite their different styles, the Abstract Expressionists did share a common approach to artmaking, which was direct, often improvisational and highly experiential. It was this method that allowed each artist to employ a distinct way of creating work that could be recognized as their own “signature style.” As one critic explained, they “wanted to believe that in the subjective process of painting itself they would find their own definition.”

[Image caption:] Franz Kline, around 1960

[Image credit:] Walter Auerbach, photographer. Rudi Blesh papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

MAKING IT PERSONAL: THE SECOND GENERATION

“The painting is just a surface to be covered.”

—Joan Mitchell

The 1950s brought fresh experiments in abstract imagery by not only the pioneers of Abstract Expressionism, but also by so-called “second-generation” artists. This included women artists such as Joan Mitchell, Helen Frankenthaler and Lee Krasner. While these artists adopted the modes of Abstract Expressionism, such as spontaneity, improvisation and a focus on process, they also replaced the urgent existential visions of their predecessors with more lyrical approaches.

Many prominent Abstract Expressionists titled their paintings with only numbers or dates to shift viewers’ focus to the painting itself and to encourage individual interpretations. Yet artists such as Joan Mitchell took a less oblique approach. Not afraid to reference the natural world in her painterly explorations of identity, she encouraged these associations by giving her paintings titles such as Ladybug (on display here). Though undoubtedly abstract, Mitchell’s painting also celebrates nature and landscape.

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[Image caption:] Joan Mitchell, 1950s

[Image credit:] Courtesy Joan Mitchell Foundation and Cheim & Read Gallery, New York.

Artwork Texts

Joan Mitchell American, 1925–1992 Ladybug 1957 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. Although she is often included in conversations about the Abstract Expressionists, in some respects Mitchell challenged conventional wisdom. Indeed, she left New York to join other artists in Paris, including Montreal-born painter Jean-Paul Riopelle, her partner of 25 years. While most Abstract Expressionists were devoted to individualistic self-expression, she saw her abstract works as dealing with nature and the outside world. She declared that her work was “about landscape, not about me.”

Franz Kline American, 1910–1962 Chief 1950 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David M. Solinger. Although his black and white brush strokes suggest spontaneity, Kline seldom worked that way. He made drawings and small studies for most of these large-scale paintings. He also used a projector to magnify parts of sketches of objects to the point of abstraction, which he would then reproduce as large paintings. Chief was the name of a locomotive Kline remembered from his childhood, when he had loved the railway. Many viewers see machinery in his images, but Kline claimed to paint “not what I see but the feelings aroused in me by that looking.”

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LP Covers Philip Guston American (born in Canada), 1913–1980 New Directions in Music 2 by Morton Feldman 1959 LP cover The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Franz Kline American, 1910–1962 Feldman Brown by Morton Feldman and Earle Brown 1962 LP cover The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Just as visual artists sought to create a new art, composers were seeking to create a new sound. One of these experimental composers was Morton Feldman, who was closely connected to many of the Abstract Expressionists. He wrote a number of pieces inspired by or dedicated to his artist friends, including Franz Kline, Philip Guston (who designed these two album covers), Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Pick up the headphones at the nearby listening station to hear Feldman’s new approaches to tonality, rhythm, pitch and volume.

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Room 6

JACKSON POLLOCK

“Every good artist paints what he is.” —Jackson Pollock

During the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock pioneered a bold approach to painting, revolutionizing the production of art. By dripping, flinging and spattering paint onto a canvas he laid on the floor, he defied centuries of tradition. No longer using an easel or even brush strokes, Pollock’s new technique engaged his entire body. As one critic described it, the canvas was used as “an arena in which to act,” with painting becoming choreography. Confronted by the radical nature of his new work, Pollock asked his wife Lee Krasner, “Is this a painting?”

He was the first abstract painter celebrated by the American mass media. Yet Pollock’s innovation came with profound self-doubt, as he battled alcoholism and depression. His meteoric career abruptly ended one night in 1956, when he crashed his Oldsmobile convertible and died. He was 44.

[Image caption:] Jackson Pollock

[Image credit:] © 2011 Hans Namuth Ltd.

Artwork Texts

 

Jackson Pollock American, 1912–1956 Stenographic Figure around 1942 oil on linen The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mr. and Mrs. Walter Bareiss Fund. Much of Pollock’s early work is characterized by a sombre palette and congested pictorial space, but this painting is bright and airy. On top of the flat fields of colour, Pollock painted two human-like forms – one near the right edge of the canvas and another just left of centre – then made fine-lined calligraphic brush strokes across the entire surface. This painting garnered praise when it was first shown in 1943. Artist Piet Mondrian described it as “the most interesting work I’ve seen so far in America.” Jackson Pollock American, 1912–1956

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The She-Wolf 1943 oil, gouache and plaster on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. In the early 1940s Pollock explored primeval or mythological themes in his work. The wolf in this painting may allude to the animal that suckled Romulus and Remus, the mythical twin founders of Rome, in the tale of the city’s birth. This work was featured in Pollock’s first solo exhibition, in New York in 1943. The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York acquired it the following year – the first Pollock work to enter a museum collection. More important than the suggestive shape of the she-wolf is the action on top of it. The colour and lines suggest language or a message being frantically transcribed, yet Pollock denies viewers any explicit meaning, leaving you to determine your own. Jackson Pollock American, 1912–1956 Full Fathom Five 1947 oil and mixed media on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Peggy Guggenheim. This is one of Pollock’s earliest “drip” paintings. It features lacy top layers of house paint swirled onto an underlayer created with a brush and palette knife. A closer look reveals an assortment of objects embedded in the surface, including cigarette butts, nails, thumbtacks, buttons, coins and a key. Though many of these items are obscured by paint, they contribute to the work’s dense and encrusted appearance. The title, suggested by a neighbour, comes from Shakespeare’s play The Tempest, in which Ariel describes death by shipwreck: “Full fathom five thy father lies / Of his bones are coral made / Those are pearls that were his eyes.” Jackson Pollock American, 1912–1956 Number 1A, 1948 1948 oil and enamel paint on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase. While the style of “drip” painting has become synonymous with the name Jackson Pollock, the artist has autographed this particular work even more directly. You can see several of his handprints in the upper right corner. Around this time Pollock stopped giving his paintings titles and instead began to number them. His wife, artist Lee Krasner, later explained, “Numbers are neutral. They make people look at a painting for what it is – pure painting.” Collectors did not immediately appreciate Pollock’s radical new style, and when first exhibited in 1949, this painting did not sell.

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Jackson Pollock American, 1912–1956 Echo: Number 25, 1951 1951 enamel paint on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Acquired through the Lillie P. Bliss Bequest and the Mr. and Mrs. David Rockefeller Fund. This work is a radical departure from Pollock’s earlier “drip” paintings, which had brought him great fame just a year or so earlier. This painting is sparsely poetic, just inky black on raw canvas. Though abstract, the painting teases us with lines that evoke figues. Pollock recognized this, and wrote in a letter to a friend, “I’ve had a period of drawing on canvas in black – with some of my early images coming thru – think the non-objectivists will find them disturbing – and the kids who think it simple to splash a Pollock out.”

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Room 7

MARK ROTHKO

“I’m interested in expressing the big emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom.” —Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko is considered one of the foremost figures of Abstract Expressionism. He believed painting was an emotional and spiritual experience, for both himself and its viewers. By the late 1940s, he reached what would become his signature style. Painting two or three soft-edged, luminescent rectangles, stacked weightlessly on top of one another and floating horizontally against a ground, he sought to transport the viewer to new realms of emotion and perception. Although his paintings may appear simplistic and repetitive, their composition, visual effects and emotional impact are complex. For Rothko, “a painting is not a picture of an experience, it is an experience.” One viewer’s personal experience of a Rothko painting cannot duplicate that of another.

[Image caption:] Mark Rothko, 1954

[Image credit:] Henry Elkan, photographer. Rudi Blesh papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Artwork Texts

Mark Rothko American (born in Latvia), 1903–1970 Slow Swirl at the Edge of the Sea 1944 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Bequest of Mrs. Mark Rothko through The Mark Rothko Foundation, Inc. Rothko, like his fellow Abstract Expressionists in the 1940s, was working toward creating a new art. Influenced by Surrealism, Rothko looked inward, to his own unconscious mind, for inspiration and material, and sought to create universal symbols in his work drawn from the subconscious. This painting features two creatures dancing between sea and sky, surrounded by arabesques, spirals and stripes. Rothko explained that the forms “have no direct association with any particular visible experience, but in them one recognizes the principle and passion of organisms.” Mark Rothko

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American (born in Latvia), 1903–1970 No. 1 (Untitled) 1948 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist. In the late 1940s Rothko eliminated the figures and organic imagery that dominated his earlier works, and began to focus on the relationship between space, colour and scale in paintings that later became known as “Multiforms.” In this work Rothko applied thin washes of paint to canvas to create a multitude of irregular forms that ebb and flow across the picture plane. Its large size and abstract style point toward the artist’s signature Colour Field paintings, which he began a year after completing this work. Mark Rothko American (born in Latvia), 1903–1970 No. 5/No. 22 1950 (dated on reverse 1949) oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist. If you spend time looking at this painting, you will see how it transforms your perception of shape and colour with each passing moment. The rectangles appear to hover just above its surface. Each of the work’s coloured segments, when stared at individually, affect how you perceive the colour of those adjacent to it. However, Rothko did not want his pictures appreciated solely for their visual qualities. He said, “If you are only moved by colour relationships, then you miss the point. I’m interested in expressing the big emotions – tragedy, ecstasy, doom.” Mark Rothko American (born in Latvia), 1903–1970 No. 10 1950 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Philip Johnson. Between 1949 and 1950, Rothko simplified the composition of his paintings and arrived at his signature style: three dominant planes of colour that softly and subtly merge into one another. He explained, “The progression of a painter’s work, as it travels in time from point to point, will be toward clarity: toward the elimination of all obstacles between the painter and the idea, and between the idea and the observer.” This was Rothko’s first painting to enter the collection of The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. It was considered so radical at the time that a MoMA trustee resigned in protest.

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Mark Rothko American (born in Latvia), 1903–1970 No. 16 (Red, Brown and Black) 1958 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. In 1957, Rothko abandoned the bright colour palette that had come to characterize much of his work. With a few exceptions, for the remainder of his career he painted with shadowy hues such as the layers of rich purples, maroons and browns that you see here. Rothko once said to a friend, “Often, toward nightfall, there’s a feeling in the air of mystery, threat, frustration – all of these at once. I would like my paintings to have the quality of such moments.” Rothko hoped that these compositional strategies would invite visual and emotional contemplation on the part of the viewer, creating the conditions for silence and reflection.

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Room 8

Wall Panels

BARNETT NEWMAN

“I would prefer going to Churchill, Canada, to walk the tundra than go to Paris.” —Barnett Newman

In his 1948 essay “The Sublime is Now,” Newman called for a new art, stripped to its essentials, that would deal with “absolute emotions.” He sought to create works that evoked the vastness of the natural world, as well as explored an individual’s place in it. “The self, terrible and constant, is for me the subject matter of painting,” he asserted. Newman’s preoccupation with the sublime and the self exemplifies the great feeling of pride among artists in post-World War II New York. American art had finally developed its own strong identity – a faith in the redemptive power of art and relentless optimism. Despite Newman’s lofty artistic goals, his rectangles of colour split by vertical stripes baffled critics and colleagues alike at his first solo exhibition in 1950. His work was rejected as impersonal, something that a house painter, rather than an artist, would do. It wasn’t until the late 1950s that the artworld was ready to recognize him as a major force in Abstract Expressionism.

[Image caption:] Barnett Newman in his Wall Street studio, 1951

ROBERT MOTHERWELL “Abstract expressionism was the first American art that was filled with anger as well as beauty.” —Robert Motherwell

Motherwell, a prolific writer and engaging speaker, became a leading spokesperson for Abstract Expressionism. He often lectured about the ideologies of the new art movement of which he was a vital part. He is best known for his Elegy to the Spanish Republic series, a life-spanning project inspired by the 1930s Spanish Civil War. The tragedy of that conflict, in which a defiantly idealistic Spanish Republic was overwhelmed by the brutal fascist militia of Francisco Franco, provided the impetus for Motherwell to dedicate a life’s work to the cause of celebrating (and mourning) freedom. As a dictatorship replaced its democracy, Spain’s fate became an emblem of a larger European struggle for freedom. Throughout this historic event, Motherwell also painted meditations on the larger themes of death, loss and sexuality.

[Image caption:] Robert Motherwell in New York City, 27 March 1959

[Image credit:] Photo by Arnold Newman/Getty Images

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Artwork Texts

Ad Reinhardt American, 1913–1967 Abstract Painting 1960–1961 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Purchase (by exchange). Many of the artists in this exhibition continued to work into the 1960s and later. Reinhardt began a series of “black” paintings in 1960 and devoted the rest of his career to exploring the possibilities of these restrictive parameters. At first this painting seems to be a flat black surface. But when you look at it longer, several shades of black and an underlying geometric structure appear. Reinhardt tried to produce “a pure, abstract, non-objective, timeless, spaceless, changeless, relationless, disinterested painting – an object that is self-conscious (no unconsciousness), ideal, transcendent, aware of no thing but art.” Barnett Newman American, 1905–1970 Onement I 1948 oil on canvas and oil on masking tape on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Annalee Newman. Newman proclaimed this painting to be his artistic breakthrough, giving the work an importance that belies its modest size. This was the first time the artist used a vertical band of colour to define the spatial structure of his work. The band, later dubbed a “zip,” became Newman’s signature mark. First he set the masking tape directly on top of the maroon background. He then applied a bright orange colour to the masking tape with a palette knife, creating an irregular band that both divides and unites the painting. The fact that the masking tape remains shows us how much of an experiment it really was for Newman.

Barnett Newman American, 1905–1970 Abraham 1949 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Philip Johnson Fund. Newman believed deeply in the spiritual content of abstract art. Abraham refers to the father of Judaism, Christianity and the Israelites, as told in the Bible’s Book of Genesis. A “knight of faith,” Abraham believed in the word of God and risked all in His name. Like Abraham, Newman conquered an immense fear of the

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unknown with faith. “I thought the title Abraham would indicate that it was more than black on black,” explained Newman. “I never had black on black…the terror of it was intense. It took me weeks to arrive at the point where I finally did it. And it was, to a certain extent, the beginning of my new life.” Robert Motherwell American, 1915–1991 The Little Spanish Prison 1941–1944 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Renate Ponsold Motherwell. Though abstract and “deliberately freehand,” the repeated vertical bands in this painting suggest imprisonment, while the rectangle can be seen as a window. Keenly aware of Surrealism’s emphasis on unrehearsed or “automatic” gestures, Motherwell began this painting by pouring a thin, dark pigment on the canvas. The work’s bright palette was inspired by a trip to Mexico, while its title is a reference to the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). For Motherwell, the Spanish Republic’s fight against a brutal dictator symbolized global struggles for freedom. He considered this painting “the first picture in which I hit something that is deep in my character.” Robert Motherwell American, 1915–1991 Elegy to the Spanish Republic, 108 1965–1967 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Charles Mergentime Fund. Motherwell Elegies to the Spanish Republic (more than 100 paintings completed between 1948 and 1967) were intended as a “lamentation or funeral song” after the Spanish Civil War. Motherwell described the Elegies as his “private insistence that a terrible death happened that should not be forgot. But the pictures are also general metaphors of the contrast between life and death, and their interrelation.” His recurring motif here is a rough black oval in varying sizes and distortions. While the ovals have various associations, Motherwell himself related them to the display of a dead bull’s testicles, the ritual performed by Spanish matadors in the bullfighting ring.

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Room 9

PHILIP GUSTON

“I should like to paint like a man who has never seen a painting.” —Philip Guston

In the 1960s, Guston began to question the relevance of abstract painting, the style of painting for which he was renowned. He found he could not justify abstraction at a time when America was being transformed by the Civil Rights movement, social upheaval, a foreign war and domestic assassination. In 1968, Guston took the audacious step of reintroducing the human figure into his painting. Using a shocking new visual vocabulary, these works made explicit the humanist values underlying Abstract Expressionism. The return to figuration satisfied an urgent need for Guston to justify his work and the role of art in society. When Guston exhibited his new style in 1970, critics and colleagues were stunned. They felt Guston had forsaken the purity of abstraction. Guston’s artist friend Willem de Kooning, one of the few that understood what he was trying to achieve, embraced Guston and said, “Do you know what the real subject is? Freedom.”

[Image caption:] Philip Guston in his New York loft, around 1956–1957

[Image credit:] Arthur Swoger (born 1912), courtesy of McKee Gallery

FREEDOM AND THE COLD WAR

“New York has begun to be seriously regarded as the futuristic artistic capital of the Western Hemisphere.”

—Foreword, The New American Painting

By the late 1950s, Abstract Expressionism had been recognized as a dominant force in American Painting. However, in contrast to its fervent focus on individuality and freedom of expression, America was becoming an increasingly repressive society. Cold War tensions fuelled fears of a traitorous enemy within – communists. Faced with the perceived threat of communism, a singular notion of American identity and patriotism was being shaped by government investigations, mass consumerism and mass media.

It was in the midst of this atmosphere of hyper-patriotism that Abstract Expressionism was promoted as a symbol of American cultural freedom, in contrast to the state repression of Soviet Russia. In 1958 the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York assembled the definitive Abstract Expressionism survey exhibition, titled The New American Painting . The show was sent abroad by the US government to eight major European cities that encircled the Cold War’s Iron Curtain. Abstract Expressionism had become Exhibit A in the display of American cultural prestige, a visual declaration of freedom and liberty, embodying the US’s new role as a global superpower.

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Artwork Texts Philip Guston American (born in Canada), 1913–1980 Painting 1954 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Philip Johnson Fund. Although Guston’s career began and ended with figurative painting, for sixteen years he devoted himself wholly to abstraction. His work from this period is relatively modest in scale when compared to that of his Abstract Expressionist peers. He applied paint in short, thick strokes using small brushes and pigments specially ground to achieve a creamy appearance. He worked very close to the canvas, often without a predetermined plan. “The desire for direct expression became so strong that even the interval necessary to reach back to the palette beside me became too long,” he said. “I forced myself to paint the entire work without stepping back to look at it.” Philip Guston American (born in Canada), 1913–1980 Edge of Town 1969 oil on canvas The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of Edward R. Broida. In 1970, Guston shocked critics and colleagues alike by exhibiting paintings in an entirely new style. His figurative, almost cartoonish, work sought to confront an America in the throes of upheaval and reform. This painting of hooded Klu Klux Klan members was his response to the brutality of a repressive society. Guston once said of these paintings, “They are self-portraits. I perceive myself as being behind the hood…. The idea of evil fascinated me…. I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan. What would it be like to be evil?”