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“The Irascibles” (Abstract Expressionists), Life Magazine cover story, 1951

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“The Irascibles” (Abstract Expressionists), Life Magazine cover story, 1951

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  1. Francis Bacon, Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, 1944, oil and pastel on canvas, triptych on wood fiberboard, each 37 x 29 inches. The crucifixion was for Bacon a symbol of humanity’s sadism. (right) Picasso, On the Beach (La Baignade) 1937. Picasso was a crucial source and personally encouraged Bacon.

  2. Francis Bacon (British, 1909 -1992), (left) Painting, 1946, oil and pastel on linen, 6' 6" x 52”, MoMA, NYC The black umbrella was the symbol of British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, and his policy of Nazi appeasement before WWII. “An attempt to remake the violence of reality itself” (Bacon)

  3. Francis Bacon, Study after Velazquez's Portrait of Pope Innocent X, 5 x 4 ft, 1953; (right top) source: Velazquez, Pope Innocent X, 1650; (right below) a still from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film, The Battleship Potemkin, Odessa steps sequence

  4. Francis Bacon, Head Surrounded by Sides of Beef (Study after Velasquez), 4’3” x 4’, oil on canvas, 1954, Art Institute Chicago

  5. (left) Francis Bacon, Three Studies of figures on Beds, 1972, oil and pastel on canvas, triptych, each panel 6’6” x 4’ 10”(right) source: Eadweard Muybridge, photograph from The Human Figure in Motion, 1887

  6. Sotheby’s May 14, 2008, a 1976 Francis Bacon Triptych sells for $86,281,000: from existential anguish and social disaster to prize art market commodity

  7. American Abstract ExpressionismTwo modes:- gestural abstraction (Action Painting)- chromatic abstraction (“Sublime” or “Color Field” painting)

  8. “The Irascibles” (Abstract Expressionists), Life Magazine cover story, 1951 Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne

  9. Post WW II: New York becomes the capital of the art world(left) Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) painting, 1950 (right) Willem de Kooning (1904–97) early study for Woman I, 1951“Action Painting”

  10. Willem de Kooning, Still Life, charcoal drawing, c.1921, student work in Rotterdam. In 1926 De Kooning stowed away on a ship to the US – an illegal immigrant!

  11. De Kooning in his studio on West 22nd street in 1937

  12. De Kooning, Elaine Fried (Elaine de Kooning), pencil drawing, c1940 – 1941

  13. Willem de Kooning, Orestes, 1947compare (right) Arshile Gorky, biomorphic surrealist cubism, 1936-7 Gorky and de Kooning in Gorky’s Studio, c. 1937

  14. Willem de Kooning (American, born The Netherlands, 1904–1997) (left) Woman, 1940, oil and charcoal on canvas, 46 x 32 in.(right) De Kooning, The Painter, 1940

  15. (left) Willem de Kooning, Pink Angels, c. 1945, oil and charcoal on canvas(right) Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, 1618

  16. Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-2 http://www.moma.org/explore/multimedia/audios/278/3106“Venus” of Willendorf, limestone painted with ochre, 4 3/4 inches, 24,000 to 22,000 BCE

  17. De Kooning, Gotham News, 1955 “Action Painting” – Abstract Expressionism

  18. De Kooning, detail below of upper right (signature) corner of Gotham News, 1955, oil on canvas Action Painting

  19. De Kooning in studio, Springs, NY, 1960s

  20. Jackson Pollock (American, 1912-1956) painting in Springs NY studio, 1950Action Painting – American Abstract Expressionism“I believe the easel picture to be a dying form.” (Guggenheim Application, 1947) James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause, 1955 8 August 1949 issue of Life magazine: first artist to become a media celebrity

  21. Lee Krasner (American, 1908 -1984) in New York studio, mid-1930sBlue Painting, 1946, oil on canvas, 28 x 36” Met Pollock in 1942; married him in 1945.

  22. Pollock, Going West, 1934-35 ; compare: Thomas Hart Benton, The Ballad of the Jealous Lover of Lone Green Valley, 1934, Oil/tempera/canvas

  23. (left) Pollock, Flame, 1934, and (below left) Naked Man with a Knife, 1938, o/c, 50 x 36” Compare (right) David Alfaro Siqueiros (Mexican, 1896–1975), Collective Suicide, 1935, enamel on wood with applied sections, 49" x 6‘ (“Il Duco”)

  24. Pollock, Pasiphae, 1943; compare André Masson, Pasiphae, 1943Surrealism (subjective mythos and automatism) and Jungian psychoanalysis: the collective unconscious

  25. Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943, SFMoMA

  26. Jackson Pollock, Mural, 19'10" x 8‘1“, 1943 commissioned by Peggy Guggenheim

  27. Jackson Pollock, Full Fathom Five, 1947, oil on canvas with nails, tacks, buttons, key, coins, cigarettes, matches, etc., 50 7/8 x 30 1/8,“ MoMA. Partly poured and partly conventionally-painted (vertical) abstraction.

  28. Hans Namuth, photographs and film stills of Pollock Painting, 1951

  29. Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist),1950, oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas, 7 ft 3 in x 9 ft 10 in, National Gallery of Art

  30. Navajo sand painting, a spiritual / healing practice; compare to “Action Painting”: the automatist, performance methods of Jackson Pollock “I feel nearer, more part of the painting. . . . This is akin to the method of Indian sand painters of the West" - Pollock http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrVE-WQBcYQ Pollock created "drip" paintings for only a few years 1947-51

  31. American Abstract ExpressionistChromatic ExpressionismPainters of the Sublime Barnett Newman & Mark Rothko

  32. Caspar David Friedrich (German, 1774 -1840), Monk by the Seashore, 1809-10, German Romantic Sublime

  33. Wassily Kandinsky (Russian 1866-1944) Composition IV, 1911, oil on canvas, showing objective forms “veiled” and “dissolved” as a way to move the viewer from material to spiritual consciousness.Kandinsky’s internationally influential theoretical text, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, was published in 1911

  34. PietMondrian, Composition with Red, Blue, and Yellow, 1930, o/c, 20 x 20”Neo-Plasticism – dynamic equilibrium (without symetry) of opposites symbolizes reconciliation of universal dualities

  35. Barnett Newman (1905-1970), Pagan Void, 1946, oil on canvas, 33 x 38” At this point the artist destroys all previous works. “The Ideographic Picture”

  36. Barnett Newman, Genesis -- The Break, 1946, oil on canvas, 24 x 27” (c.61 x 69 cm), Dia Center for the Arts

  37. Barnett Newman, Onement I (1948), 27 by 16”, oil on canvas and oil on masking tape on canvas; (below) Kasimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915, oil on canvas, 32” square. Russian Suprematism

  38. Barnett Newman Vir Heroicus Sublimis (Man, Heroic, Sublime) 1950-51, o/c, 8 x 18 ft“We are freeing ourselves of the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, myth, or what have you, that have been the devices of Western European painting.”

  39. Barnett Newman and an unidentified viewer with Cathedra in Newman's studio, 1958.

  40. Barnett Newman, Broken Obelisk, 1971, Cor-Ten steel, one of four copies, Rothko Chapel, Houston

  41. Barnett Newman, Broken Obelisk, MoMA, New York, 2008.

  42. Mark Rothko (American b. Marcus Rothkowitz, Lithuania 1903 -1970)(left) Self-Portrait, o/c, 32/25”, 1936; (right) Entrance to Subway [Subway Scene], o/c,1938 "Art Must be Tragic and Timeless"

  43. Surrealism and mythMarkRothko, Omen of the Eagle, 1942 In a 1943 letter to the New York Times co-written with Barnett Newman, Rothko wrote:“It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints, as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess a spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art."

  44. Biomorphic Surrealism and automatism"It was with the utmost reluctance that I found the figure could not serve my purposes....But a time came when none of us could use the figure without mutilating it.“Mark Rothko, (left) Sea Fantasy, 1946; (right) Untitled, 1944/1945

  45. Rothko, (left) Number 7, 1947-48; (right) No. 15 Multiform,1949

  46. Mark Rothko, Untitled (Blue, Green, and Brown), 1952; West 53rd St. studio, NYC, 1952"The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them."

  47. Mark Rothko, No. 14, 1960, o/c, 114 x 105 in. SFMoMA

  48. Rothko Chapel suite of paintings, 1965-66, De Menil Collection, Houston, Texas, 1970, Chapel architect, Philip Johnson “I wanted to paint both the finite and the infinite…. I was always looking for something more.” - Mark Rothko

  49. Alfred Molina in the currently running play, Red, aboutthe ethics of accepting the Four Seasons commission for the Seagram building in 1959 for a series of mural-sized paintings. He turned down the commission after having dinner in the restaurant with his wife, famously saying,“Anybody who will eat that kind of food for those kind of prices will never look at a painting of mine,”

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