1. The Critical Reception of
Abstract Expressionism
Art
109A:
Contemporary
Art
Westchester
Community
College
Fall
2012

2. Critical Reception
To most viewers, Abstract
Expressionism did not look like “art”
“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
Norman Rockwell, The Connoisseur, The Saturday Evening Post, January 13, 1962

3. Critical Success
But Ab Ex enjoyed support from
influential critics, collectors, and
dealers
Peggy Guggenheim and Jackson
Pollock in front of Mural, 1946
Eliot Elisofon, Betty Parsons standing in a NYC gallery, 1961
Image source: http://www.matthewlangley.com/blog/?p=71

4. Critical Success
And backing from influential
institutions like the Museum of
Modern Art
Bruce Maud Design
http://www.brucemaudesign.com/
work_museum_of_modern_art.html
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/

5. 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

6. Critical Success
Coverage in art magazines
Robert Goodnough, “Pollock Paints a Picture,” Art
News, 1951
Hans Namuth, Pollock working, 1951

7. 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

8. Critical Success
1958 Time magazine reported a
booming market for Abstract
Expressionist pictures
“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
Walter Sanders, Metropolitan Museum director James J. Rorimer examining a painting
by Jackson Pollock, 1959
LIFE

9. 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

10. Cold War
House Committee on Un-American
Activities investigated thousands of
ordinary citizens suspected of
Communist sympathies
House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
Hearings, 1947
Senator Joseph McCarthy, Time, March 8, 1954

11. Cold War
Writers and actors were
“blacklisted”
Red Channels, a pamphlet-style book issued by the journal Counterattack in 1950
Wikipedia

12. Cold War
FBI files were kept on artists such
as Picasso and Ben Shan
FBI File on Pablo Picasso

13. Cold War
In 1949 Congressman George A.
Dondero delivered a speech to
congress denouncing modern art
as a “weapon of communism”
“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
Al Fenn, Congressman George A. Dondero, 1947
LIFE

14. 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

15. “[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

16. 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

17. International Success
“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
Frank Scherchel, People looking at a painting by artist Jackson Pollock
at an American art show, France, 1955
LIFE

18. 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

19. 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”

20. 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

21. “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

22. Tansey’s painting is an ironic commentary
on how America’s postwar military and
economic supremacy correlated with the
Mark Tansey, Triumph of the New York School, 1984 Whitney Museum so-called “Triumph of the New York
School.”

23. “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
Mark Tansey, Triumph of the New York School, 1984 Whitney Museum