The Critical Reception of Abstract Expressionism

Art  109A:    Contemporary  Art  Westchester  Community  College  Fall  2012  

Critical Reception To most viewers, Abstract Expressionism did not look like “art”

Norman Rockwell, The Connoisseur, The Saturday Evening Post, January 13, 1962

“Jackson Pollock's abstractions stump experts as well as laymen. Laymen wonder what to look for in the labyrinths which Pollock achieves by dripping paint onto canvases laid flat on the floor; experts wonder what on earth to say about the artist.” “Art: Chaos, Damn It! Time Magazine, Nov 20 1950

Critical Success But Ab Ex enjoyed support from influential critics, collectors, and dealers

Eliot Elisofon, Betty Parsons standing in a NYC gallery, 1961 Image source: http://www.matthewlangley.com/blog/?p=71

Peggy Guggenheim and Jackson Pollock in front of Mural, 1946

Critical Success And backing from influential institutions like the Museum of Modern Art

Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Philip L. Goodwin and Edward Durell Stone, Architects, 1939. Robert Damora, Photographer, 1939 Image source: http://www.robertdamora.com/

Bruce Maud Design http://www.brucemaudesign.com/work_museum_of_modern_art.html

Critical Success In 1949 Life Magazine published an article titled “Jackson Pollock: Is he the greatest living painter in the United States”?

Life Magazine, “Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?” 1949

Critical Success Coverage in art magazines

Robert Goodnough, “Pollock Paints a Picture,” Art News, 1951

Hans Namuth, Pollock working, 1951

The New Academy 1951 Cecil Beaton photographs fashion models in front of Pollock’s pictures at Betty Parsons

Cecil Beaton, The Soft Look, photograph of a model posing in front of a Jackson Pollock painting at Betty Parsons Gallery, Vogue March 1, 1951

Critical Success 1958 Time magazine reported a booming market for Abstract Expressionist pictures

Walter Sanders, Metropolitan Museum director James J. Rorimer examining a painting by Jackson Pollock, 1959 LIFE

“While there is a recession in the U.S. economy, one group of Americans more accustomed to bust than boom is in the midst of a new wave of prosperity. They are Manhattan's abstract expressionist painters, who until three years ago could rarely afford to move out of their coldwater, walk-up studios. Now their shows are selling out, and at record high prices.” “Art: Boom on Canvas,” Time Magazine, April 7, 1958

Cold War Abstract Expressionism reached maturity during a period of heightened national anxiety

Cover to the propaganda comic book "Is This Tomorrow"' published in 1947 by the Catechetical Guild Wikipedia

Cold War House Committee on Un-American Activities investigated thousands of ordinary citizens suspected of Communist sympathies

Senator Joseph McCarthy, Time, March 8, 1954

House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) Hearings, 1947

Cold War Writers and actors were “blacklisted”

Red Channels, a pamphlet-style book issued by the journal Counterattack in 1950 Wikipedia

Cold War FBI files were kept on artists such as Picasso and Ben Shan

FBI File on Pablo Picasso

Cold War In 1949 Congressman George A. Dondero delivered a speech to congress denouncing modern art as a “weapon of communism”

Al Fenn, Congressman George A. Dondero, 1947 LIFE

“As I have previously stated, art is considered a weapon of communism, and the Communist doctrinaire names the artist as a soldier of the revolution.” Congressman George A. Dondero, “Modern Art Schackled to Communism,” speech delivered to the United States House of Representatives, 1947

Critical Success But such strident views dissipated by the mid 1950s: Senator McCarthy was censured in 1954, and attitudes toward modern art became more tolerant, as the avant garde stance of defiant “individuality” became linked directly to American values of personal freedom

Life Magazine, “Jackson Pollock: Is He the Greatest Living Painter in the United States?” 1949

“[T]he public grew more tolerant of modern art and came to believe that the flourishing of avant-garde art and culture was the mark of a liberal democratic society. Indeed, at decade’s end, the same art once lambasted by conservative forces as anti-American were being held up as a symbol of capitalist liberty, freedom, and the American way of life. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, Abstract Expressionism was celebrated as a quintessentially American form, the embodiment of the kind of personal freedom of expression denied artists behind the Iron curtain. For the first time, modernism and America were linked, the one nurtured by the free society of the other.” Lisa Phillips, The American Century: Art & Culture 1950-2000, p. 37

International Success Meanwhile, the Museum of Modern Art – operating on behalf of the United States Information Association – was promoting Abstract Expressionism abroad

A wall map illustrating the scope of the Museum of Modern Art’s International Program, displayed concurrently with The New American Painting: As Shown in 8 European Countries 1958-1959 at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959 http://www.moma.org/international/index.html

International Success

Frank Scherchel, People looking at a painting by artist Jackson Pollock at an American art show, France, 1955 LIFE

“Modern American art stormed through Paris last week, the advance patrol of a U.S. culture parade . . . that U.S. art packed a wallop, no one any longer disputed.” “Art: Americans in Paris,” Time Magazine, April 18 1955

International Success MoMA’s international exhibitions promoted American Abstract Expressionism as a symbol of American individualism and freedom

Carl Mydans, American National exhibition in Russia, 1959 LIFE

Abstract Expressionism and the Cold War Eva Cockroft, Serge Guilbaut and others have argued that Abstract Expressionism was used as a “weapon of the Cold War”

Abstract Expressionism and the Cold War

“[A]bstract expressionism was for many people an expression of freedom: freedom to create controversial works, freedom symbolized by action and gesture, by the expression of the artist apparently freed from all restraints . . . [and] proof of the inherent liberty of the American system, as opposed to the restrictions imposed on artists in the Soviet system.” Serge Guilbaut, “The New Adventures of the Avant Garde in America,” October 15 (Winter 1980); rpt in Ellen Landau, ed., Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and Critique, Yale University Press, 2005, p. 383-395

“To its admirers in Both America and Europe, Abstract Expressionism, with its improvisational gestures, epic scale, and intensely subjective emotions, symbolized the power of individual liberty in a democratic society. The artists themselves, however, were uninterested in politics, preferring to embrace private or universal values. Clyfford Still wrote, ‘It has always been my hope to create a freer place or area of life where an idea can transcend politics, ambition, and commerce.’ This proved a utopian sentiment. The claim that they were free from ideology only made their art function more effectively as propaganda for various political agendas.” Lisa Phillips, The American Century: Art & Culture 1950-2000, p. 40-41

Mark Tansey, Triumph of the New York School, 1984 Whitney Museum

Tansey’s painting is an ironic commentary on how America’s postwar military and economic supremacy correlated with the so-called “Triumph of the New York School.”

Mark Tansey, Triumph of the New York School, 1984 Whitney Museum

“Each of the more than a dozen officers on each side is a recognizable portrait of a famous artist, critic, or writer, including on the French side, the Surrealist Andre Breton and Pablo Picasso (dressed in fur), and on the American side such painters as Jackson Pollock and the highly influential New York art critic, Clement Greenberg. In the background is a war-torn landscape dotted by the smouldering fires of recent artistic conflicts over which the New York School has unconditionally triumphed. Two or three French officers are mounted on anachronistic horses while the American "cavalry" is a modern armored half-track.” Jim Lane, Humanitiesweb.org http://www.humanitiesweb.org/spa/gai/ID/1216