Abstract Expressionism

Abstract expressionism is a post–World War II art movement in American painting, developed in New York in the 1940s. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the centre of the western art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.

 

Jackson Pollock

Alive between 1912 and 1956, Jackson Pollock was an American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. He was widely noticed for his technique of pouring or splashing liquid household paint onto a horizontal surface, enabling him to view and paint his canvases from all angles.

His paintings have been widely criticized, with people regularly stating “my cat could’ve painted that”, but despite this probable truth, his artwork has also risen into international acclaim, and his name is one of the biggest in the art world.  I mean, everyone and their artistically inclined cat has heard of Jackson Pollock.

His paintings usually look as if a couple hundred of sickly cats have violently puked all over a gigantic canvas, and then hung in an art gallery.  I could go into more details of the characteristics of his artwork, but I feel like that sentence sums it all up perfectly.

His tributes to the accidental ejection of stomach acid were painted with oil paint and enamel paint.

Some of the artists and movements that influenced Pollock were; his wife Lee Krasner, David Alfaro Siqueiros, Abstract expressionism, Expressionism, Modern art, and Action painting.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945. Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  The Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975.  So Pollock never lived to see the end of the Vietnam War.

Even after I’ve criticised his work so much, I actually like the utter chaos of his work, but I also like that he was an example of how you can be an acclaimed artist without actually possessing any real talent.

 

Helen Frankenthaler

Alive between 1928 and 2011, Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades, she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work.

Her work mostly consists of large blobs of paint spread out across the canvas, in a multitude of colours that sometimes blend into each other.

The mediums that she used to make her messy artworks were; oil paints, pens, acrylics, and watercolour.  She also sometimes painted on woodcuts.

Some of the artists and art movements that inspired her were; Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting, Cubism, Lyrical Abstraction, Jackson Pollock, Hans Hofmann, and Paul Freeley.

Some of the major world events in her lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945. Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  The Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975.  9/11 in 2001.

I’m not a big fan of her artwork.  I guess that I just don’t really understand it.

 

William De Kooning

alive between 1904 and 1997, Willem de Kooning was a Dutch-American abstract expressionist artist. He was born in Rotterdam and moved to the United States in 1926, becoming an American citizen in 1962. In 1943, he married painter, Elaine Fried.

His paintings are mostly lots of seemingly random, multicoloured brushstrokes, which sometimes form into people and objects.

Much like Jackson Pollock, Kooning used a technique called “action painting”.  Action painting, sometimes called “gestural abstraction”, is a style of painting in which paint is spontaneously dribbled, splashed or smeared onto the canvas, rather than being carefully applied. The resulting work often emphasizes the physical act of painting itself as an essential aspect of the finished work or concern of its artist.

Some of the mediums he used to make his artwork were; Graphite, Crayons, Pastels, Oil paint, and bronze.

Some of the artists and art movements that inspired Kooning were; Abstract expressionism, Expressionism, Abstract art, Modern art, Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky, Mark Rothko, Hans Hofmann, Nell Blaine, Adolph Gottlieb, Anne Ryan, Robert Motherwell, Philip Guston, Clyfford Still, and Richard Pousette-Dart.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945. Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  The Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975. 

I’m not exactly a big fan of his artwork.  I don’t really like abstract expressionism to be perfectly honest.  Although I don’t understand it either, so that doesn’t help much.

 

Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_expressionism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Frankenthaler

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willem_de_Kooning

1st Draft of My Personal Statement

Modernism

Modernism is both a philosophical movement and an art movement that, along with cultural trends and changes, arose from wide-scale and far-reaching transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  Modernism refers to people in these times who thought of themselves as modern because they were breaking away from the then society’s ideals.

 

Anita Malfatti

Alive between 1889 and 1964, Anita Catarina Malfatti is heralded as the first Brazilian artist to introduce European and American forms of Modernism to Brazil.

A lot of her artwork is paintings of people, painted with lots of bright colours.  These colours don’t accurately portray the colours of peoples’ realistically, but they instead they make the painting very colourful, and so it feels very alive and full of emotion.  It is more expressive than realistic.

I think that she mainly used oils and watercolours.

Some of the artists and movements that inspired her were; expressionism, German expressionism, pointillism, Fritz Burger-Muhlfeld, Lovis Corinth, and Ernst Bischoff-Culm.

Some of the major world events in her lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945. Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  The Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975, so she never got the chance to witness the end of the Vietnam War.

I like her art, the colours she uses are always very expressive, and always seem to work well together.

Georgia O’Keeffe

Alive between 1887 and 1986, Georgia O’Keeffe was an American artist. She was best known for her paintings of enlarged flowers, New York skyscrapers, and New Mexico landscapes. O’Keeffe has been recognized as the “Mother of American modernism”.

All of her paintings are very bright and colourful and are all very experimental with different colour palettes and shading.  Her art is so beautiful.

She used gouache, watercolour and oils for her painting.  She also liked using charcoal for drawing.

Some of the artists and movements that inspired her were; Charles Demuth, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, John Marin, Paul Strand, and Edward Steichen, Arthur Wesley Dow, abstract art, American modernism, and Precisionism.

Some of the major world events in her lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945. Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  The Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975.

I like her art, it is so beautiful.  She seems to focus on nature a lot, and she portrays it as inexplicably beautiful.  It is very cool.

 

Henry Moore

Alive between 1898 and 1986, Henry Moore was an English artist. He is best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art.

His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Moore’s works are usually suggestive of the female body, apart from a phase in the 1950s when he sculpted family groups. His forms are generally pierced or contain hollow spaces. Many interpreters liken the undulating form of his reclining figures to the landscape and hills of his birthplace, Yorkshire.

As well as sculpture, Moore produced many drawings, including a series depicting Londoners sheltering from the Blitz during the Second World War, along with other graphic works on paper.

Henry Moore was known to make sculptures out of Green Hornton stone, various types of stone, wood, bronze, plaster, and concrete.  But when drawing, he was known to have used pencils, charcoal, chalk, and pens.

Some of the artists and art movements that inspired him were; modernism, medieval sculpture, Constantin Brâncuși, Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and Frank Dobson.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945. Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  The Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975.

I’ve never been a big fan of his abstract type of sculptures, and thus his don’t really appeal to me.  But I absolutely love his drawings, they’re moody and very atmospheric, and I just love them.  When I went to the Tate Britan I actually found the above drawing, and I loved it but didn’t know who Henry Moore was, so I’m really happy to have found the artwork and its artist now.  Also one of the reasons why I love his drawings so much is because the more scribbly ones are similar to my drawings.  I love seeing how realistic forms can be made out of scribbly lines.  One of his scribbly drawings is below.

 

Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anita_Malfatti

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_O%27Keeffe

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Moore

http://catalogue.henry-moore.org/objects/11138/the-artists-hands;jsessionid=C15D5592C9795DACE69D764F05C5EE15

Surrealism

Surrealism is a cultural movement that started in 1917 and is best known for its visual artworks and writings. Artists painted unnerving, illogical scenes with photographic precision, created strange creatures from everyday objects and developed painting techniques that allowed the unconscious to express itself.

Salvador Dali

Alive between 1904 and 1989, Salvador Dali was a Spanish Surrealist painter born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain. Dali was a skilled draftsman, best known for the striking and bizarre images in his work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of the Renaissance masters.

Salvador Dali’s paintings often comprise of a series of seemingly random objects and bits of people.  Sometimes these anatomical parts and objects are clumped together in a large blob.  These strange amalgamations are often positioned in a barren, sandy coloured wasteland with a bright blue sky.  His weird shapes can often be linked to rocks around the rocky coastline of where he grew up, like the painting below.

Dali hated the idea that art and artists always had to be very serious, so one of his goals was to make some of his art funny, silly and bizarre.  He loved putting things and objects together that don’t normally go together, like a sofa in the shape of women’s lips, and a lobster telephone that actually worked.  This is one of his most iconic works.

His most famous artwork by far is The Persistence of Memory, also sometimes referred to as “the one with the melting clocks”.

Dali painted with oil paints.

Some of the many people and movements that inspired Dali were; The renaissance masters, Diego Velázquez, Pablo Picasso, surrealism (obviously), cubism, expressionism, and dada.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945. The Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975.

I love Salvador Dali’s work, it is extremely creative, unique, it makes fun of art and itself, and he definitely wasn’t afraid to turn art conventions on their head.

René Magritte

Alive between 1898 and 1967, René Magritte was a Belgian Surrealist artist. He became well known for creating a number of witty and thought-provoking images. Often depicting ordinary objects in an unusual context, his work is known for challenging observers’ preconditioned perceptions of reality.

Looking at his paintings, he seemed to have had great fun inventing the compositions of all of his paintings; some play with combining two different anatomical parts and objects, some play with what looks like cut out shapes.

Most of them feature men in old-fashioned bowler hats, and almost all of his paintings look like the dumb experiments someone starting out with Photoshop would attempt.

His most iconic painting is a fruit suspended in front of (I bet you can’t guess) a man in a bowler hat.

He mainly used oil paints.

Some of the many artists and movements that inspired him were; surrealism, expressionism, futurism, cubism, dada, impressionism, Jean Metzinger, and Salvador Dali.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.   The Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975.  So Magritte never lived to see the end of the Vietnam War.

I really like Magritte’s work, it’s bizarre and hilarious.  Just looking at it makes me feel like what I imagine trippy drugs would make me see.

 

Marc Chagall

Alive between 1887 and 1985, Marc Chagall was a Russian-French artist of Belarusian Jewish origin. An early modernist, he was associated with several major artistic styles and created works in virtually every artistic format, including painting, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramic, tapestries and fine art prints.

A lot of his paintings are mainly painted with blues and greens and seem to suspend crudely-painted figures and animals in some kind of land that can’t exist in our 3-dimensional world.

He used oils, acrylics and watercolours.

Some of the artists and art movements that inspired him were; avant-garde, cubism, surrealism, expressionism, symbolism, fauvism, Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.  The Vietnam War between 1955 and 1975.

My opinion of his work is that it is okay, I’m not really a big fan, but his colour palettes are very nice.

 

Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvador_Dal%C3%AD

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Magritte

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Chagall

Cubsim

Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture. Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century.

 

Pablo Picasso

Alive Between 1881 and 1973, Pablo Picasso was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France.

His earlier works were very realistic, as he had an extraordinary ability to draw and paint as a child.  This amazing talent just kept on improving from then.  In his early 20s, his very close friend shot himself dead in front of Picasso.  this brought on what’s known as Picasso’s “blue period”, which is when he only painted with blue.  During this time, he mainly painted society’s outcasts.

Years afterwards, he and his good friend Georges Braque created the art technique and movement known as Cubism, which allowed them to almost mess up the normal anatomy of a figure like a Rubix cube, and to play with light and shadows.  And from here on out Picasso’s paintings just got weirder and weirder.

As well as sprinkling powdered pigment direct on to the canvas and mixing paint with materials like sand and newspaper, Picasso liked to use industrial paints alongside the more traditional oil brands, to create some of his unique colours. He particularly liked a type of enamel paint made by a firm called Ripolin.

Some of the many other artists and movements that inspired him were; Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, Rossetti, Steinlen, Toulouse-Lautrec, Edvard Munch, El Greco, surrealism, and African art.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

I love Pablo Picasso’s artwork, it is very unique and creative, and he completely broke most painting conventions, and priced the pieces together to create something new… then he did that several times over.  He was so cool.

 

Georges Braque

Alive Between 1882 and 1963, Georges Braque was a major 20th-century French painter, collagist, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. His most important contributions to the history of art were in his alliance with Fauvism from 1905, and the role he played in the development of Cubism.

He spent his time on this planet making cubist paintings, and paintings landscapes.  The cubist paintings tended to have mostly very dark, earthy colours, like greys and browns.

But his more (but still very far off) realistic landscape paintings were made with bright, pastel colours, which is an interesting contrast to the darker, moodier colours of the majority of his cubist paintings.  The colours used in these landscape paintings almost convey a dream-like feel to the viewer.

He mostly used oils and watercolours for the landscapes, and oils for the cubist paintings.

Some of the long list of fellow artists and art movements that inspired him were; impressionism, fauvism, Henri Matisse, Aldo Crommelynck, André Derain, and Pablo Picasso.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.

Braque’s work isn’t something I’m really drawn to, I guess that it just doesn’t have enough angst for me.  But nonetheless I don’t mind his art, it looks quite nice.

 

Paul Klee

Alive between 1879 and 1940, Paul Klee was a Swiss-born, natural draftsman who experimented with and eventually deeply explored colour theory and wrote about it extensively.

Paul Klee’s paintings are very abstract, and normally feature lots of multicoloured squares of flat colour.  He explored the effects that using different colours next to each other, and how overlapping shapes and colours effect each other and the overall picture.

Amongst other mediums, he mainly used oil and watercolour paints, and chalk.

Some of the many artists and art movements that influenced Klee were; Alfred Kubin, Robert Delaunay, Maurice de Vlaminck, pointillism, and abstract art.

Some of the major world events in his lifetime were; The Wright brothers made the first controlled, sustained flight in heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903.  The titanic setting sail and inevitably sinking in 1912.  World War 1 between 1914 and 1918.  In the same year, a worldwide influenza epidemic struck; by 1920, nearly 20 million were dead.  World War 2 between 1939 and 1945.  So Paul Klee didn’t live to witness the end of ww2.  It’s sad that the last glimpse he had of this world was when it was in one of its darkest and scariest periods.

In all honesty, I do not like his art at all.  I just find in unimaginably boring.  But I do kind of like looking at it.

 

Research

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubism

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/10758308/Why-Picassos-palettes-were-a-work-of-art-in-themselves.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Braque

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Klee