Conclusion.

Conclusion:  1950s American artists ''Rebel Artists''

 Abstract Expressionism

In the years following the end of World War II, New York School Abstract Expressionism was at its prime in America. When in 1956, an automobile accident ended Jackson Pollock's life, who was considered to be the leader of the abstract expressionists known as ''rebel artists'', they continued to paint, exhibit frequently, and receive approving critical attention (not to mention increasing prices for their work), in retrospect it is apparent that by the mid-to-late 1950s, their aesthetic leadership, even though not their public popularity, was on the decrease. By that time, a new generation of artists was beginning to emerge, one that would seek its artistic identity outside the philosophical and stylistic principles of Abstract Expressionism. A dramatic upheaval  in the art world marked by solo shows by Jasper John and Robert Raushenburg abd the 'sixsteen artists' exhibition at the Musuem of Modern Art (MOMA) in 1959-60, and that explain how1950s art was an ouverture (lead up) for 1960s pop art. But the Abstract Expressionists continued to play a role in the art world artistic awareness. Today, as well, nearly half a century after the Abstract Expressionists first rose to fame, they still capture the imagination of American artists, art historians, and the public. The Abstract Expressionists remain important not only for the art they created, but also for the manner in which they created it. (notes from my essay). thanks

By Meriem Eljazouli x

Franz Kline 1950’s American artist

  Franz Kline belonged to the early generation of New York School Abstract Expressionist Artists whose artistic innovation by the 1950s had been recognised across the Atlantic including Paris. New York School Abstract Expressionism represented by Jackson Pollock, Willem deKooning, Albert Kotin and others became the leading art movement of the postwar era.

   Franz Kline's story reads like a movie plot: Young artist starts out with high hopes, spends years struggling without success, eventually finds a style, becomes an "overnight sensation" and dies too soon. His vision focused on one of the ways to approach Abstract Expressionism was through psychic vision. His paintings didn't need to have a meaning, because that wasn't their purpose. and that exactly what I loved about his work and got me to read and discover more about this artist.

How does my own work relate with Franz

Kline’s work?

When I was looking for an artist to relate my work with, I came cross Kline's black and white paintings and I found them liberating, in other words opposite to everything I have been trying to do in my work.  I have always been trying to paint or create work that has a meaning. finally here is an artist that created paintings that were supposed to make one feel, not comprehend. I love it.

New York really didn't care much that it had talent back from England ready to take on the world. Franz struggled for years as a figurative artist, doing portraits (for two loyal patrons) that won him a modest reputation. He also painted city- and landscapes, and occasionally resorted to painting barroom murals to get up the rent money. In the mid 1940s, he met fellow artists Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock, and began to follow his own growing interest in trying new ways of painting.

Kline had been noodling around with black and white for years, creating small brush drawings and projecting them onto the wall of his studio. Now he got rather serious about creating the projected images using just his arm, brush and mental imagery. The pictures that began to emerge were given a solo exhibition in New York in 1950. As a result of the show, Franz became a Name and his large, black and white compositions - likened to grids, or Oriental calligraphy - achieved notoriety.
           
     (need name, date and size )                                                 

These two paintings are by Franz Kline, both painted in 1959, shows the freedom of the way the brush strokes are moved cross the canvas. His spontaneous and intense style, focusing less, or not at all, on figures or imagery, but on the actual brush strokes and use of canvas. For most of Kline's [mature and representative] work, however, he would prepare many draft sketches – notably, commonly on refuse telephone book pages – before going to make his "spontaneous" work.

''Spontaneous work'' sounds good to me, that made me want to look more closely at kline’s painting style and try to do it his way; feel  the paintings instead of funding a meaning for them, that encourages me to get away from a more detailed painting style and understand simple, big marks, big colours, black and white, diagonals, and a different way of working. I want to learn how to simplify my work, which had become needlessly fussy.

Since Kline was working before the invention of acrylics, he of course used oil paint, as do I usually, but in the canvas below I decided to use acrylic just to challenge and push myself to use different medium, knowing that it dries quicker and I will have no time to correct or wipe it off.

The painting on canvas (20 x 35 cm)  below is of a mosque's arches from my imagination as I tried to close my eyes and paint while listening to some Moroccan music; all to do with feelings and the free use of colours and mark making (spontaneously) with no intention to reflect a meaning or  message for the spectator. I have painted two other canvas shown below also with acrylics using the same atmosphere and techniques. When i decided to stop working on the painting I stepped three meters back and took a good look at the painting and it was like opening a present, a surprise,  but I couldn't say weather I liked or hated it but I have experienced it and I was then looking and feeling the painting, then i told myself, well may be that what Kline meant... I am still searching  ...!!

 

        meriem eljazouli x

Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still's work relating to my work

Below are a couple of examples of my current work.  I started with nature and detail in nature. 

Image 1 Wood and embroidery /Inks

Even though I have used photo shop to enhance image 1 the colours are bright and lay side by side as in still's work. Detail of nature is jagged and broken down in texture and colour as in most of stills work.


The Image below is of fabric which I have manipulated and painted.  The outcome is also of jagged lines and shapes which are also found in Stills's paintings.

Image 2 Muslin/household paint and photo shop


-Nicki Roberts 11/04/2012

Jasper Johns Study.

These images are taken from my own work I feel they relate to my study of Jasper Johns. They represent images that are know to the viewer but I have distorted them with the use of different mediums. Johns looked at the use of different mediums to create his early images such as Flag he used collage, encaustic and oil paint.

Detail of Flag (1954-55). Museum of Modern Art, New York City. This image illustrates Johns' early technique of painting with thick, dripping encaustic over a collage made from found materials such as newspaper. This rough method of construction is rarely visible in photographic reproductions of his work.

Accessed 8/4/2012 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasper_Johns

Robert Rauschenberg Part 2.

I wanted to try and relate my own work with an artist from the 1950s. I have chosen Robert Rauschenberg's, and have mixed magazine cut outs with paint, oil pastel and wire work inspired by his Combines pieces. I wanted to make it bright, as I think the colours used in his work are bold and not subtle.  I have related the piece to my 'Altar' project I am working on right now, By using magazine cut outs as the background, to keep the ongoing theme of 'Vogue' throughout. I also created something new with the images featured, Something Rauschenberg spoke about doing with his findings featured in his Combines. 

-Luka

Robert Rauschenberg

Another Artist part of the 1950s New York School of Artists was Robert Rauschenberg. Rauschenberg was born in Texas and attended  Kansas City Art Institute and then the Academie Julien in Paris. 

Rauschenberg is known for his mixed media pieces, known as Combines:

A Combine painting is an artwork that incorporate various objects into a painted canvas surface, creating  a sort of hybrid between painting and sculpture. Items attached to paintings might include photographic  images, clothing, newspaper clippings, emphera, or  any number of three-dimensional objects. 

Rauschenberg collected things to use in his artwork from the streets of New York City. He said himself that he...

 "wanted something other than what I could make myself and I wanted to use the surprise and the  collectiveness and generosity of finding surprises. And if  it wasn't a surprise at first, by the time I got through with it, it was. So the object itself was changed by its context and therefore became a new thing."

[Information : Wikipedia - 'Robert Rauschenberg' & Combines']

Estate - 1963

Canyon, 1959

Untitled, 1954

Untitled, 1954

       

America in the 1950's

The 1950's in America started with Harry.S. Truman as president. It was a decade that saw many changes in America not least with in the arts movement. Maybe the changes retrospectively seem more subtle than those of the sixties and subsequent decades but the fifties paved the way for modern life as we know it and especially contemporary art as we know it. Here are a wide range of events that happened in this decade.
1950 - Korean War begins.
1951 - The first live transcontinental television broadcast takes place in San Francisco, California from the Japanese Peace Treaty Conference. One month later, the situation comedy I Love Lucy premieres on CBS, sparking the rise of television in the American home and the Golden Age of Television
1953 - Dwight D. Eisenhower inaugurated as President
1954 - The Tournament of Roses Parade becomes the first event televised nationally in color
1955 - Ray Kroc opens a McDonald's fast food restaurant and, after purchasing the franchise from its original owners, oversees its national (and later, worldwide) expansion
1955 - Warsaw Pact, which establishes a mutual defense treaty subscribed to by eight communist states in Eastern Europe (including the USSR
1955 - Disneyland opens at Anaheim, California
1955 - Rock and roll music enters the mainstream, with "Rock Around the Clock" by Bill Haley and His Comets becoming the first record to top the Billboard magazine pop charts. Elvis Presley also begins his rise to fame around this same time
1956 - Jackson Pollock dies in a car crash in Springs, New York
1957 - Soviets launch Sputnik; "space race" begins
1959 - Cuban Revolution
1959 - Alaska and Hawaii become the 49th and 50th U.S. states; to date, they are the final two states admitted to the union

[Facts accessed on 5/4/12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_United_States_history_(1950%E2%80%931969)]

William De Kooning

Through my own essay, I will be looking at the artist, William De Kooning, and two pieces from his Woman series (shown below). De Kooning is Dutch-American and was part of the New York School of artists in the 1950s. As you can see, his work fits both Abstract Expressionist and Figurative genres of work, looking at the figures of woman but in unusual ways. De Kooning took his time with these pieces, taking a year to complete Woman (left) and two years to complete Woman, I (right).

        Woman-William De Kooning-1949/50             Woman, I–Willam De Kooning-1950/52