When was it created?
04
▶ „We felt the moral crisis of a world in shambles, a world destroyed by a great depression and a fierce World War, and it was impossible at that time to paint the kind of paintings that we were doing—flowers, reclining nudes, and people playing the cello.“
Post-War American Art
Art for a world in shambles
▶ Whereas Surrealism had found inspiration in the theories of Sigmund Freud, the Abstract Expressionists looked more to the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung and his explanations of primitive archetypes that were a part of our collective human experience. They also gravitated toward Existentialist philosophy, made popular by European intellectuals such as Martin Heidegger and Jean-Paul Sartre.
▶ Given the atrocities of World War II, Existentialism appealed to the Abstract Expressionists. Sartret’s position that an individual’s actions might give life meaning suggested the importance of the artist’s creative process.
▶ Through the artists physical struggle with their materials, a painting itself might ultimately come to serve as a lasting mark of one’s existence. Each of the artists involved with Abstract Expressionism eventually developed an individual style that can be easily recognized as evidence of his/her artistic practice and contribution.
Some details
▶ New York school paintings do not have a clear focal point because most of the artists held strong convictions based on Marxist ideas of social and economic equality.
▶ Sartre’s position that an individual’s actions might give life meaning suggested the importance of the artist’s creative process. Through the artists physical struggle with their materials, a painting itself might ultimately come to serve as a lasting mark of one’s existence.
▶ Abstract expressionists looked more to Carl Jung and his explanations of primitive archetypes that were a part of our collective human experience. So you cant see any figure in their paintings.
