Marcus Chen
The 1950s and 1960s were transformative decades for painting, reflecting the post-World War II optimism, Cold War anxiety, and the burgeoning civil rights movement. Abstract Expressionism emerged as a powerful movement in American painting, with artists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko pushing boundaries through spontaneous expressions and bold colour fields. This movement, centred in New York, is often referred to as the New York School and redefined what could be considered art. In contrast to Abstract Expressionism, the 1960s saw the rise of Pop Art, led by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, who connected fine art with popular culture, including television, advertising, and film.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Abstract Expressionism | Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline |
| Action Painting | Vigorous, spontaneous brushwork, large brushes, dripping paint |
| Post-Painterly Abstraction | Impersonal, austere, intellectual aesthetic |
| Color Field Painting | Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, large areas of solid colour, minimal brushwork |
| Pop Art | Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Jasper Johns, popular culture, everyday objects, celebrities, consumer products |
| Avant-garde | Dada artist Marcel Duchamp, musician John Cage, elements of real life |
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What You'll Learn
Abstract Expressionism
The Abstract Expressionist movement also included influential collagists and sculptors, such as David Smith and Louise Nevelson. This period of Abstract Expressionism saw a broad exchange of ideas, not only among American artists but also with European painters such as Nicolas de Staël, reflecting a shared interest in nature and landscape. The movement's younger followers in the 1950s increasingly embraced colour-field painting, filling their canvases with large areas of a single colour, while moving away from the highly expressive style of Action painting by the early 1960s.
The 1950s and 1960s also saw the emergence of new directions within Abstract Expressionism, such as Hard-edge painting exemplified by John McLaughlin, and the development of Geometric abstraction as a reaction against the subjectivism of Abstract Expressionism. Colour field painting, Lyrical Abstraction, and Post-painterly Abstraction, championed by Clement Greenberg, emerged as influential new directions in the 1960s, marking a shift towards a more impersonal, austere, and intellectual aesthetic.
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Post-Painterly Abstraction
The 1950s and 1960s saw a shift in the world of painting, with artists moving away from the emotional and personal Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s and 1950s. This shift gave rise to a new movement: Post-Painterly Abstraction.
Frankenthaler, a prominent second-generation Abstract Expressionist, began to move away from the vigorous and spontaneous brushwork associated with Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. Instead, she experimented with thin stains of paint on raw canvas, influencing the Post-Painterly Abstractionists who followed. This new movement favoured a more impersonal, austere, and intellectual aesthetic, often characterised by linear designs, bright colours, and a lack of detail.
The movement synthesised influences from artists such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Ad Reinhardt, and Ellsworth Kelly, as well as the late work of Henri Matisse and the targets and flags of Jasper Johns. Post-Painterly Abstractionists also explored new approaches to composition, often stressing contrasts of pure hue rather than light and dark, and shunning thick paint and tactile effects.
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Pop Art
The term "Pop Art" was officially introduced in December 1962 at a "Symposium on Pop Art" organised by the Museum of Modern Art. By this time, American advertising had adopted many elements of modern art, prompting American artists to search for more dramatic styles to distinguish their work from well-designed and clever commercial materials. Pop Art flourished in the 1960s, with artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein connecting traditions of fine art with images of popular culture from television, advertising, and film. They created collages, prints, paintings, sculptures, and drawings, with diverse subjects including celebrities, political events, and consumer products.
In the United States, Pop Art marked a return to representational art, using hard edges and distinct forms, in contrast to the painterly looseness of Abstract Expressionism. It favoured realism and impersonal expression, moving away from the emphasis on personal feelings and symbolism in Abstract Expressionism. American artists, exposed to the diversity of mass-produced imagery in their everyday lives, produced work that was generally more bold and aggressive than their British counterparts.
The British Pop Art movement, emerging in the mid-1950s, was more academic in its approach. It employed irony and parody to explore what American popular imagery represented and its power to manipulate people's lifestyles. The Independent Group (IG), founded in London in 1952, is regarded as the precursor to the British Pop Art movement. This group of young artists, writers, and critics challenged the dominant modernist culture of the time, seeking to make it more inclusive of popular culture.
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Color Field Painting
The style of colour field painting is based on large spaces of solid colour, with colour as the objective, and the background and foreground becoming one. The solidity of colour or the direction of a line took precedence in their paintings. Artists created a new style, freed from figuration, exploiting the dominance of colour over space. The movement places less emphasis on gesture, brushstrokes, and action in favour of an overall consistency of form and process. One of the characteristics defining colour field art is the smoothness of the paint without texture, achieved by staining with diluted paint mixed in buckets and poured onto the raw canvas.
In the early 1960s, a form of Colour Field Painting emerged that was more purely abstract, with artists like Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Alma Thomas, and Sam Gilliam leading the way. These artists moved away from the emotional, mythical, or religious content of the earlier movement and focused on open compositions, limited painterly gestures, and drawing attention to the relationship between the canvas and the forms painted on it.
In Britain, Colour Field Painting developed in the 1960s among artists like Robyn Denny, John Hoyland, and Richard Smith. These artists created images whose reality is self-evident and devoid of props or crutches that evoke associations with outmoded images.
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Action Painting
The 1950s saw the emergence of a new art movement called Action Painting, which was closely associated with Abstract Expressionism. Abstract Expressionism was a form of art that developed in the aftermath of World War II, which saw the defeat of Germany, Italy, and Japan, leaving much of Europe and parts of Asia in ruins. The exposure of the human loss in Nazi concentration camps and the dropping of atomic bombs on Japanese cities brought about a worldwide examination of basic human values and ethics, which led to a period of dramatic change in art.
Abstract Expressionism, often called "Action Painting", involved artists applying paint rapidly, using large brushes, or dripping and throwing paint onto large canvases. This movement was centred in New York and is thus referred to as the "New York School". The Abstract Expressionists sought to express emotions, individual feelings, and personal experiences in their work, and they valued their individuality and spontaneous improvisation in their artistic methods.
The term "Action Painting" was coined by Rosenberg in 1952, although he began developing his action theory in the 1930s. Over the next two decades, his redefinition of art as an act, a process, rather than a product, laid the foundation for several major art movements. Many artists are associated with Action Painting, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Barnett Newman, and Mark Rothko, who created diverse bodies of work and explored new ways of painting. Pollock's paintings have become synonymous with Action Painting, with his "Autumn Rhythm" being a quintessential example of the style.
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Frequently asked questions
The 1950s saw the rise of Abstract Expressionism, Color Field Painting, and the precursor to Pop Art. Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko explored new ways of painting, seeking to express emotions, individual feelings, and personal experiences. Color Field painters, including Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, used expanses of color to evoke emotional responses. In the late 1950s, Pop Art emerged, notably in British art, as a reaction to the abstraction that dominated the earlier part of the decade. Artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein translated consumer culture into fine art.
Abstract Expressionism was a post-World War II movement that represented the avant-garde and a shift from European influence to an American-centered art scene. It often involved spontaneous, vigorous brushwork, and large, expansive canvases. Artists applied paint rapidly, sometimes dripping or throwing it onto the canvas. Abstract Expressionists sought to express their emotions, individual feelings, and personal experiences in their work.
The art of the 1950s reflected the optimism of the post-war boom, the anxiety of the Cold War, and the burgeoning civil rights movement. It was a dialogue between the personal and the political, a reflection of the complexity of the time. The growing political and economic stability in the United States in the 1950s led to a "cultural revolution" in the 1960s, promoting antiauthoritarian education, women's liberation, new career structures, and increased intellectual and sexual freedom. Artists of the 1960s rejected Abstract Expressionism and began to represent items from consumer culture and everyday life.
