Abstract Expressionism: Jackson Pollock, Thomas Hart Benton, and Mid-Century Abstraction

Class Logistics and Structure

  • The class is scheduled to end at 04:50.
  • The class stops ten minutes early at 04:40 to allow students to ask individual questions or follow up on matters from previous non-in-person sessions.

Jackson Pollock and Thomas Hart Benton: Lineage and Stylistic Origins

  • Jackson Pollock created an eternally famous drip/splatter painting housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York City, widely regarded as one of the top ten most important paintings of the twentieth century.
  • Thomas Hart Benton served as Jackson Pollock's teacher at the Art Students League in New York City, where Pollock initially learned to paint in Benton's style before rebelling and developing his drip technique.
  • Hans Namuth photographed Jackson Pollock in the process of painting.
    • Traditional painters place a canvas upright on an easel.
    • Pollock placed his canvas flat on the ground/floor, exploiting the horizontal surface and his physical mobility as a standing, walking, or hovering painter to splatter paint onto the canvas.
    • This technique represented a revolutionary moment in twentieth-century art history.
  • Pollock's Going West (c. 1935):
    • Painted approximately fifteen years prior to Pollock's 1950 splatter paintings.
    • Created during Pollock's early career while under the tutelage of Thomas Hart Benton, specifically following a trip through the American West that Pollock took with Benton.
    • Serves as a direct document of their time together and highlights stylistic similarities between teacher and student.
    • Depicts an American Scene / Great Migration theme featuring figures with a stagecoach and mules or horses navigating the landscape of the American West.
    • Pollock physically modeled for Benton for a figure in Benton's accompanying musical/narrative scene painting.
  • Formal Analysis of Benton's Musical Scene Painting (The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of the Lone Green Valley):
    • Uses a pyramidal composition in the lower right corner, arranging three figures in a triangle defined by real and implied lines, echoed by the edge of a table.
    • Depicts three figures making music: one playing the fiddle, Pollock playing the harmonica, and a third figure holding a harmonica at rest with an open mouth, indicating singing.
    • Features an imaginative inclusion of musical note impressions along a striped pattern.
    • The musical notes and voices rise along a large curving rainbow line into the background.
    • The background depicts a violent, horrific narrative scene occurring behind the sepia tone of jealous love.
    • Utilizes dark, ill-defined, curvilinear lines rather than straight lines, evoking a sense of unease regarding the background violence.

Formal Comparison: Benton's Style vs. Pollock's "Going West" (1935)

  • Definition of Artistic Abstraction:
    • Abstraction occurs when an artwork looks different from how the human eye perceives the natural, real world.
    • Represents an artistic intervention or departure from naturalistic perception, serving as an embellishment of reality to convey dreamlike or imaginative qualities.
  • Benton's Abstract and Modern Tendencies:
    • Incorporates elongated human bodies, contorted and unnatural physical postures (e.g., the man with the drill in his panel series), and a montage/collage-like structure.
  • Direct Influences and Shared Compositional Elements between Benton and Pollock's Going West:
    • Central Oculus: Both paintings feature a central circular sun or moon that acts as a structural anchor node for the composition.
    • Directional Curvilinear Lines: Benton uses a rainbow-like arc; Pollock adopts this arc and turns it into a full coiling spiral wrapping around the entire piece.
    • Spatial Depth and Perspective: Both works establish spatial depth, drawing the viewer's eye inward past the canvas plane, but both utilize deliberately modified and altered linear perspective.
    • Color Palette: Both paintings utilize earthy palettes (greens, dark tones, oranges). Benton's daytime scene uses strong sun projection to create heavy shadows behind figures; Pollock's nighttime scene uses strong moonlight to create bright highlights.

Evolution to Pure Abstraction: Pollock's Drip Paintings (1950)

  • Pollock's Philosophy: Pollock famously stated, "I'd rather express than illustrate," shifting the paradigm from representing identifiable figures to evoking pure feeling through the direct act of painting.
  • Pure Abstraction vs. Representation:
    • Representational art uses paint to depict external subjects (e.g., mules, carts, landscapes).
    • Pure abstraction allows paint to function solely as paint, reaching the pinnacle of abstract activity by splattering medium across a surface without portraying external objects.
  • Structural Differences between Pollock's Going West (1935) and Hallum Burgundy (1950):
    • Composition:
    • Going West (1935) contains a clear central anchor/oculus around which the eye rotates.
    • Hallum Burgundy (1950) lacks a central node, employing an "all-over composition" where paint is distributed across the entire canvas.
    • Color Palette and Layering:
    • 1935: Uses color blending, tone modulation, and hue variations.
    • 1950: Uses an unprimed canvas with a limited palette (primarily black, white, and beige) applied in distinct, unblended layers.
  • Structural Similarities and Continuity across Pollock's Career:
    • Light and Dark Contrast: Both works maintain a strong play between light and dark shadow (reinterpreted through stark black and white in 1950).
    • Circular Motifs: The circular coiling motif from Going West is transposed in 1950 into a repeating circular pattern sweeping laterally across the entire canvas.
  • Embodied Action and Impact on Art History:
    • The 1935 easel painting was executed through localized hand and wrist movements on an erect canvas.
    • The 1950 drip painting was executed as an embodied physical activity, requiring whole-body movements across a horizontal canvas.
    • Pollock's performance-like process inspired 1960s performance art, video art, and body art, granting permission for the physical event of art creation (e.g., walking down a street or throwing objects at a wall) to be considered the artwork itself.
    • The viewer's eyes follow the circular motion of the paint, experiencing the physical movement embodied by the artist during creation.

Comparative Survey of Mid-Twentieth Century Abstract Expressionism

  • Theoretical Context: Mid-century abstraction encompasses diverse approaches, which art critic Clement Greenberg theorized in his writings on modernist painting.
  • Mark Rothko:
    • Completely non-representational focus on pure color and form.
    • Features soft-edged rectangular shapes referred to by critics as "lozenges" (typically featuring three interacting warm tones).
    • Applied paint using unconventional tools (e.g., pieces of fabric or soap) alongside brushes to eliminate hard edges, creating a hovering, floating mass effect that conveys a spiritual quality.
    • Displays edge-awareness, leaving subtle gaps and thinner paint application along the margins of the canvas.
  • Willem de Kooning:
    • Woman I (and Woman II): Famous series held by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Feminist art historian Carol Duncan noted that the museum considers Woman I so essential that whenever it goes on loan, it is replaced on display by Woman II.
    • Represents one of the least abstract approaches within Abstract Expressionism due to its inclusion of an identifiable female figure.
    • Utilizes a flat, non-three-dimensional, diffuse, all-over composition.
    • Classified as Action Painting: Executed rapidly, violently, and spontaneously while the canvas was positioned upright, resulting in slashed brushstrokes and downward-cascading drips.
    • Later Works: Completely abandoned figuration for pure abstraction, blending action-based brushwork with broad color blocking akin to Color Field painting.
  • Classification of Styles:
    • Action Painting: Characterized by fast, direct, violent, spontaneous movement and visible brushstrokes or drips (e.g., Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline).
    • Color Field Painting: Characterized by large, immersive fields of flat or softly blended color (e.g., Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still).
    • Clyfford Still: Works (featured prominently at the AKG Art Museum in Buffalo) bridge the divide between Action Painting (jagged, drip-like edges) and Color Field Painting (broad fields of color).
  • Franz Kline:
    • Action painter utilizing stark, limited color palettes (primarily black, white, and gray).
    • Process: Created small studio sketches of real objects (e.g., a desk lamp), projected them onto canvas using a projector, and used the projected outlines as a guide for large-scale abstract compositions.
  • Norman Lewis:
    • Blurs the line between representation and abstraction using automatic drawing techniques.
    • Process: Placed a pencil on canvas and allowed the unconscious mind to draw continuous lines without lifting the tool; then stepped back, identified emerging figures (e.g., profiles, slender human figures, feet), and filled them in.
    • Created abstract compositions inspired by specific real-world structures, such as Cathedral (evoking cathedral architecture and stained-glass window forms).
  • Lee Krasner:
    • Painting theme How of Love: Features tightly coiled, highly energetic, vibrant compositions where visual energy feels contained and twisted like a spring.
    • Was married to Jackson Pollock until his death in the 1950s, maintaining an active artistic dialogue while developing a distinct style.
  • Adolph Gottlieb:
    • Utilized a symbolic, pictographic visual system throughout his career, balancing abstract forms with referential elements.
    • Employed studio assistants in his later years to facilitate his artistic vision.
  • Critical Approach to Art Theory:
    • Art critics selectively choose artworks that conform to their theoretical claims while intentionally neglecting works that contradict their arguments.

Questions & Discussion

  • Class Q&A and Academic Majors:
    • Inquiries regarding student major and minor statuses in Art.
  • Side Dialogue and Ordering:
    • Food Order Details: Request for a platter with white rice, lettuce, and red onion.
    • Drink Order Details: Request for an Iced Pumpkin Cream Matcha with fried bananas, green tea, venti (large) size, classic sweetener option, ordered for Sierra (Order #788).
    • Social Reference: Statement acknowledging a black activist figure standing up for people.