The Term New York School Refers to a Postwar Art Movement That
Painters in Postwar New York Urban center
The finish of World War Two was a pivotal moment in world history and by extension the history of art. Many European artists had come up to America during the 1930s to escape fascist regimes, and years of warfare had left much of Europe in ruins. In this context New York City emerged as the most important cultural heart in the West. In role, this was due to the presence of a diverse group of European artists like Arshile Gorky, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalì, Piet Mondrian, and Max Ernst, and the influential High german teachers Josef Albers and Hans Hofmann (run across also Black Mountain Higher). American artists' exposure to European modernist movements also resulted from the founding of the Museum of Modern Art (1929), the Museum of Not-Objective Painting (later the Guggenheim Museum, 1939), and galleries that dealt in mod art, such every bit Peggy Guggenheim's Fine art of this Century (1941). Both Americans and European expatriates joined American Abstract Artists, a group that advanced abstruse fine art in America through exhibitions, lectures, and publications.
These institutions and the fine art patrons affiliated with them actively promoted the piece of work of New York Urban center artists. During the 1940s and '50s, the scene was dominated by the figures of Abstract Expressionism, a grouping of loosely affiliated painters participating in the first truly American modernist movement (sometimes called the New York School), championed by the influential critic Clement Greenberg. Abstract Expressionism'south influences were various: the murals of the Federal Fine art Project, in which many of the painters had participated, various European abstract movements, similar De Stijl, and especially Surrealism, with its emphasis on the unconscious mind that paralleled Abstruse Expressionists' focus on the artist's psyche and spontaneous technique. Abstruse Expressionist painters rejected representational forms, seeking an fine art that communicated on a monumental calibration the creative person'southward inner land in a universal visual language.
Jackson Pollock: Number 30, 1950 (Autumn Rhythm), enamel on sheet, 2.667×5.258 m, 1950 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, George A. Hearn Fund, 1957, Accession ID: 57.92); © 2011 The Pollock–Krasner Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
These painters fall into two wide groups: those who focused on a gestural awarding of paint, and those who used large areas of color as the basis of their compositions. The leading figures of the offset group were Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and higher up all Jackson Pollock. Pollock's innovative technique of dripping paint on sail spread on the floor of his studio prompted critic Harold Rosenberg to coin the term activeness painting to describe this blazon of do. Activeness painting arose from the understanding of the painted object as the result of creative process, which, as the firsthand expression of the artist'south identity, was the true work of art. Helen Frankenthaler also employed experimental techniques past pouring thinned pigments onto untreated canvass.
Mark Rothko: No. 13 (White, Red on Yellow), oil and acrylic with powdered pigments on sail, 2.423×2.067 chiliad, 1958 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of The Marking Rothko Foundation Inc, 1985, Accretion ID: 1985.63.5); © 2011 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko/Artists Rights Social club (ARS), New York; image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
The 2nd branch of Abstruse Expressionist painting is normally referred to as Colour Field painting. Two cardinal figures in this group were Mark Rothko, known for canvases equanimous of two or iii soft, rectangular forms stacked vertically, and Barnett Newman, who, in contrast to Rothko, painted fields of colour with precipitous edges interrupted by precise vertical stripes he chosen "zips" (see Vir Heroicus Sublimis , 1950–51). Through the overwhelming calibration and intense colour of their canvases, Color Field painters like Rothko and Newman revived the Romantic aesthetic of the sublime.
Considering of the huge influence of Abstract Expressionism in postwar New York Urban center, other artists and movements are generally understood in relation to it. Ad Reinhardt in the early 1950s and so Frank Stella later in the decade painted abstract canvases, but rejected the Abstract Expressionist emphasis on gesture and the painting as a means of communing with the artist (run into Stella'southward Die Fahne Hoch! , 1959). They instead reinforced the essence of the painting equally a physical object through precise geometric forms and smooth awarding of paint, presaging Minimalism (come across also Hard Edge painting).
The other principal move of postwar New York was Pop fine art. Although Popular had begun in England (run across, for example, Richard Hamilton), postwar America provided a meaningful context for the movement's emphasis on mass media and consumer culture. American adherents also saw Pop art as a welcome alternative to pure abstraction. The artists Jasper Johns and his close friend Robert Rauschenberg rejected Abstruse Expressionism'south attachment to the universal meaning expressed in a work of art, instead creating multiple or fluid meanings through combinations of everyday objects and images. Johns depicted "things the mind already knows," such as American flags, targets, numerals, and beer cans, and incorporated newsprint and plaster casts into his works (see Target with Iv Faces , 1955). Rauschenberg also blurred the boundaries betwixt painting and sculpture with his combines, such as Bed of 1955. These works are related to both assemblage and collage in their use of found iii-dimensional objects (bedding, furniture, taxidermied animals) and layering of printed material (production packaging, newspaper, photographs) on painted surfaces.
Andy Warhol: Self-portrait, acrylic and silkscreen on canvas, 2.032×2.032 k, 1986 (New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Buy, Mrs. Vera G. List Gift, 1987, Accession ID: 1987.88); © 2012 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; image © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Both Johns and Rauschenberg provided a disquisitional departure from the pure abstraction of the dominant painters of the 1950s, setting the phase for the flourishing of Pop art in the '60s. Andy Warhol was unquestionably the central figure of the American Pop fine art movement. He first worked as a highly successful advertising artist in New York before exhibiting paintings and silkscreen prints showtime in the early on 1960s. Best known for his images of Campbell's soup cans, Coke bottles, and American public figures, Warhol'south work seems to celebrate icons of consumer culture – both bodily products and celebrities who were marketed and sold as such, similar Marilyn Monroe – but is also often interpreted as a critique of passive, unthinking consumption. James Rosenquist, a contemporary of Warhol, too took inspiration from his work in advertising every bit a billboard painter. His huge canvases depicting images from print media and advertisements, such as Marilyn Monroe I (1962), are rooted in the vulgarity of contemporary life, but reminiscent of Surrealism in their juxtaposition of disparate, bitty imagery.
The success of abstract and Pop painters in postwar New York established the city's international importance as an artistic center, in the ensuing decades drawing to it some of the world'southward almost talented and innovative artists.
Internet resources
Find more than images and information through these links, selected by the editors of Oxford Art Online.
Multimedia resources
- MoMA, Abstract Expressionist New York [interactive site with images, videos, and texts]
- MoMA, De Kooning, A Retrospective [interactive site with images, videos, and texts]
- SFMOMA, Jackson Pollock on His Process [video, with links to related videos and interactive features]
- Tate, Modern Paint Podcast on Rothko [streaming audio]
- National Gallery of Art, Jasper Johns, An Apologue of Painting, 1955–1965 [images and curt essays]
- National Gallery of Art, Art Since 1950 [educational resource, PDF]
- Smarthistory – Pop Art [videos accompanied past short articles]
- The Fine art Story: Your Guide to Modern Art [images, timelines, and articles on movements, artists, and critics]
Collections and images
- Museum of Modern Art, New York
- Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh
- Whitney Museum of American Fine art, New York
- Guggenheim Museums
Source: https://www.oxfordartonline.com/page/1634