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Few would argue that the painting and sculpture that emerged from the so-called New York School in the mid 1940s was the foremost artistic phenomenon of its time and was labeled as the Abstract Expressionist movement. Abstract expressionism was a reaction to social realism, surrealism, and primitive art in the 1940s; this is a turning point in American art history because it caused the rest of the art world to recognize New York as the new center of innovation. The movement synthesized three other previous art forms. Social Realists "socially grounded" activist art of the 1930s responded to the disaster of the economy in America and the rise of fascism abroad by working in socially conscience styles. "This art form was contaminated by the cliches of the Stalinist popular front" (American Visions p. 469). Abstract expressionists responded to these art forms by deriving their new style from personal experience and by embodying this in contemporary forms, instead of getting their ideas from politics. The influence of Surrealism in The Abstract Expressionist Movement was its stress on the power of the unconscience as the most fertile ground of imagery. The expressionists valued the Surrealist style because it revealed the action of the dreaming mind and valued the accidental and the involuntary: "It welcomed the image that rose unbidden from a chaos of marks" (Modern Art 3rd Ed, p. 265). It also valued the American surrealists' sense of mission. Their belief that art and life was inseparable heartened American artists who felt marginal, ignored by other Americans and felt provincial with respect to Paris. The Abstract Expressionists also used "primitive" art as a way of cultural escape. They looked at tribal artifacts in the American Museum of Natural History in New York City and believed it was disclosing one of the main buried roots of modernism. Cave paintings especially influenced many Abstract expressionists such as Pollock and Rothko. Aspects of cave paintings that were appealing to the Expressionists were the apparent lack of interest in composition. Sacred signs overlaid over unconfined surfaces were appealing because the artist was not restricted by a framing edge. They also admired the scale of cave paintings. They were very big and encouraged their followers to paint big. The most significant impact of primitive art was the cave paintings admirable freedom, which influenced the free, unbound style in which the abstract expressionists painted. The revolt of fascism and realism is freedom, which is articulated in the free form style of the Abstract Expressionist. Americans for generations had sought to achieve their own artistic maturity and had largely failed, either by inadequate assimilation of European models or by America's own provincialism. The Abstract Expressionist Movement was so influential because it was the first time that American artists were doing something new and different from Europe. American Artists for the first time had an advantage over Europe, which virtually transferred the center of the art world from Paris to New York. Ironically, it was the paralyzing poverty of the Great Depression that gave younger American artists their first advantage. Beginning in 1935, with the Federal Art Project organized under the Works Progress Administration, artists could earn a living as artists and do so free to create in whatever manner they might choose. "They could even gravitate to New York, traditionally America's safe haven for the revolutionary, and there band together as a beleaguered community." (Frank Romani). Just as Paris had nurtured such foreign artists such as Picasso, Gris, and Chagall, along with its host of native French masters, New York attracted a cosmopolitan assortment of aspiring painters and sculptors. The reason why many foreign artists migrated to New York was because European artists were in an area that was occupied by World War II. Many artists fled from Europe to the United States, which stifled artistic expression in Europe while at the same time stimulated artistic expression in America. New York became an artist's utopia. The rise of imperialism created American pride and patriotism. Artists expressed themselves freely without anyone trying to control their expression or ideas. World War II helped the New York School of Artists perfect their methodology and aided them in their search for significant content. The Abstract Expressionists as a group shared a common experience, however, as individuals they did not think of themselves as a group with common ideals. Similarities between artists were that they all wanted to use personal intuition to make something new and distinctively American, yet universally valid and unprovincial. Within The Abstract Expressionist Movement, there were different groups of artists that had a particular style. The first to break through and make a significant impact on the art world was Jackson Pollock (1912-56). The paintings that Pollock exhibited in 1943 made the first and most emphatic public expression of the new mood. Pollock was a major influence on the art world because he pushed Expressionism to a point where "subject matter was so improbable that all need to retain it had been eliminated" (Story of Pollock p. 28). Pollock's technique of spreading uncut lengths of canvas over the floor and of pouring or flinging liquid paint onto it from above permitted him to literally be in the painting, to move about within it and thus give equal emphasis to all parts. Although anticipated in Impressionism, this- the so-called "holistic" composition- was something new in modern art. The emergence of the Abstract Expressionist in America had a profound effect on the rest of the art world because it relocated the center of the art world from Paris to New York. Many factors caused America to be the new center of Creativity. Political and economical causes such as the Great Depression and world war II, as well as former artistic genres such as Surrealism, Social Realism, and primitive American art influenced the Abstract Expressionist new style. Bibliography: works cited 1. Hunter, Sam and Jacobs, John. Modern Art, 3rd Edition. The Vendome Press, New York, 1992. 2. Hughes, Robert. American Visions. Alfred A. knopf, Inc., New York, 1997. 3. Mitchel, Corrine. The Life of Polock. Phaidon Press Limited, London, 1996. 4. Boston, Marsha. Art History and Studio Art Instructor, La Jolla Country Day School. 5. Romani, Frank. Art Historian, School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 6. http://www.biddingtons.com/content/pedigreeabstract.html Word Count: 1072
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