How ‘American’ is the New York School?
“…the kind of art in question is sometimes called “American-type painting”. Abstract Expressionism is the first phenomenon in American art to draw a standing protest, and the first to be deplored seriously, and frequently, abroad.”
- Clement Greenberg, ‘American Type’ Painting, 1955
No.5, Jackson Pollock, 1948, oil on fiberboard, Private Collection, New York
Strong, forceful, independent. The sheer power and vibrancy is unquestionable. In scale, it towers above the rest and stretches out further than the eye can possibly conceive. There is no rest, no time to pause; swift, hectic, and unstoppable. Explosions of colour swirl and shift with not a single breath to soften. This could easily be a description of America’s most iconic qualities –its vast stretch of land, its towering sky scrapers, bustling metropolis’, perhaps an account of one of America’s grand natural wonders or even the transcendental idea of the American spirit? This description however, is of a work painted by Jackson Pollock, Abstract Expressionist artist and member of the New York School.
Many works produced by artists associated with this school differed greatly in their approaches to art and they often did not share a singular visual vocabulary. The one element that has always remained true is that their works have often been regarded as wholly ‘American’, and not just for their group title. This kind of statement of course does not come without complications and questions. Who were the artists that formed the New York School and what was so inherently ‘American’ about their work? Where and how did they learn their art practice? Why was there such a need for these artists work and styles to be specifically acknowledged and recognised as ‘American’? Such questions are still apparent even today, over half a century later. The way that we engage with contemporary art today is no longer defined by national schools or as a teleological development, where one art movement progresses from its inspiration or predecessor. During the 1940’s and 1950’s, art criticism was still, in some respect, stuck in its traditional roots, with a great value placed on a linear model of the history of modern art. This is ironically captured in Ad Reinhardt’s cartoon, How to look at Modern Art in America.
How To Look At Modern Art in America, Ad Reinhardt, 1946
Here we see the story of art in the form of a caricature – a tree. The roots represent the firm foundations which are representative of the Greeks, as well as post-Impressionist artists: Cezanne, Seurat, Gauguin and Van Gogh; this is followed by Braque, Matisse and Picasso, which form the strong trunk, the forefathers of modernism; finally we are left with many branches and leaves representing individual artists, which literally and figuratively branch off from these fundamental beginnings. The fact that some branches are weighed down by issues of business, patrons and subject matter, show a strong sense of frustration and anxiety placed on American artists to establish themselves within this problematic and rather complicated framework.
As highlighted in Reinhardt’s cartoon, the majority of artists listed here are from Europe; in particular there is a distinctive emphasis on the avant-garde movements which originated and flourished in Paris. For the majority of the nineteenth-century, Paris was respectively established as the art capital due to its progression and developments in modern art. Only in the 1940’s did America reach worldwide recognition for the art that they produced at this period in time. The vast array of work preceding this date fell short of being monumental. The low status of American art pre-1940, from an international perspective, was adopted by many American historians of the United States for much of the twentieth century. Art historian, Andrew Hemingway, noted that the Royal Academy’s 1993 exhibition, American Art in the Twentieth Century, described American art produced between 1900 and 1940 as a “lengthy period of incubation and exploration”, where these artists were lacking substance of an inherently ‘American’ aesthetic. He goes on to state that “only American artists that could be seen as directly engaged with the modernist tradition warranted inclusion” highlighting the twentieth century art historians adoption of an essentially modernist conception for the larger history of western art.
Hemmingway’s underlining of this problem, with the view of American aesthetic essentially presented as modernist, and ignoring its pre-history that dates back to the Frontier, not only neglects the inherently indigenous American art that preceded this period as well as the works of say, for example, the Ashcan School or the Precisionists, but also the concept that for art to be seen as ‘outstanding’, it needed to be inserted within a truly globalised history of world art. Charles Caffin’s The Story of American Painting, explained how American art had failed to match up with European artistic achievements, lacking in a national style or aesthetic, merely borrowing or copying from other cultures, which thus led to these works being read as ‘insignificant’. Serge Guilbaut openly acknowledges in a culmination of essays within How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, how the emerging artistic styles in America in the mid-century, were not simply a creative progression from the Parisian avant-garde; Art historian Michael Leja advocates that the ideologies at play within the New York School are key to understanding the ‘Americaness’ of their work, addressing that for Guilbaut, this constituted an “explicit, consciously held set of beliefs and commitments organised around a political affiliation…new liberalism, the conservative right and the Communist left”. Guilbaut addressed the reasons as being a majority of issues which culminated as a consequence of the Second World War: political power, immigration, economic instability and a rise in exhibitions displaying American modern art. The famous art critic and supporter of the New York School, Clement Greenberg, analysed how “Abstract Expressionism [was] the first phenomenon in American art to draw a standing protest, and the first to be deplored seriously, and frequently, abroad…to win serious attention…respect”.
This is not to say that the previous art movements in America, before the rise of the New York School, were any less ‘American’, but rather that the production, form and reception of these artists and their work, and the social and political climate in which they were working, reflected the need for a new, more fitting, style of art. Following the devastation and the horrors of the first half of the century, artists and many creative outlets faced a difficult problem in what was to be the subject of their work. Barnett Newman argued that the devastation caused by the Second World War required a new style of art that represented the ‘new’ world; his writings in the catalogue for the 1943 annual exhibition of the American Modern Artists at the Riverside Museum in New York, demonstrate his, and other artists of the New York School’s, ambition to project an art that was relevant, innovative and intrinsically American:
“We have come together as American modern artists because we feel the need to present the public a body of art that will adequately reflect the new America that is taking place today and the kind of America that will, it is hoped, become the cultural centre of the world. This exhibition is a first step to free the artist from the stifling control of an outmoded politics.”
- Guilbaut, S., ‘The Second World War and the Attempt to Establish an Independent American Art’ in How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985, p.69
Newman’s statement was accurate, especially in terms of ‘freeing’ the artist. The New York school consisted of a mixture of varying art practises, a wide variety of visual forms and were not restricted by any particular set of rules or characteristics as previous European art movements often had been. Barbara Hess asserts in her essay, A Constant Searching of Oneself, how it is “neither possible nor productive to try to pin Abstract Expressionism down to a single aesthetic programme or a stable group identity”. Even the title of her essay evokes this direct sense of ‘searching’ that is often inseparable from the artists of this time. The title ‘New York School’ was an umbrella term used to define a variety of working artists; the majority consisted mostly of ‘Abstract Expressionists’, however some were given other titles such as ‘Action-Painters’ or ‘Colour-Field Painters’. This sense of variation within the New York School did not restrict them because they were lacking a cohesive and recognisable style; in fact, this reflected what it meant to be ‘American’ with more clarity and truth. As stated earlier in Hemmingway’s writings, American art was constantly searching for an art practise that would be recognised with a national style, something that would firmly establish them within the history of Western art. Essentially, it could be argued that the unrestricted, individual practice of each New York School painter was representative of many of America’s ideologies: the takeover of the West in the search of land/home, the aspiration for the ‘American Dream’, for development, progression. David Shapiro assessed how the New York School was frequently seen as rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and nihilistic which could reference this sense of searching so caught up in the concept of youth and overturning tradition, which is so manifest in America’s history.
This overturning of orthodoxy within the New York School was down to several factors; a particular feature was the changing avenues for artists to gain support and recognition. Roosevelt’s Federal Arts Projects, such as that of the Works Progress Administration, provided artists with an income, creative freedom, moving away from the values of the Academy and an environment which was “working outside of the dealer/critic/museum system”. All of these factors provided the artists of the New York School with a backdrop that enabled a new outlook and approach to art. The culture of the 1930’s in America, very much fostered a more egalitarian approach to the ‘art world’; never before in the history of western art had the ‘art world’ been open to minorities. The constellation of the WPA, the Artists Union and these artist’s involvement with leftist activity provided a watershed moment for their careers, to practise art in a way that was not cultivated ever before. Many of the New York School joined the American Abstract Artists organisation during this period, which opened further possibilities and prospects for their career and training. The AAA was the first organised effort to provide a space and access for those working in all different kinds of modernist idioms, which provided an amazing forum for both presenting and bringing together those that were working within an abstract language. All of these programs and organisations flourished in America more than elsewhere during the mid-twentieth century, encouraging a new and experimental period in American art. This is not to say that art movements in Europe were not advocating a move away from the figurative towards non-objective art; much of the art in Europe had already delved into ‘abstract’ or ‘expressive’ avenues of creativity and the Abstract Expressionist’s themselves were in fact taught and influenced by European art movements; German Expressionism, Italian Futurism and French Surrealism and Cubism to name a few. Greenberg however assured his readers in Partisan Review that “as dark as the situation still is for us, American painting in its most advanced aspects –that is, American abstract painting –has in the last several years shown here and there a capacity for fresh content that does not seem to be matched either in France or Great Britain”. This kind of rhetoric was not uncommon; many critics and writers understood that the art of the New York School – ‘American art’ or even ‘American-Type Painting’ which Greenberg titled his 1955 essay, had overturned European art movements. Hess attempts to raise issue with Greenberg’s article, basing the fault in his writings in “the difficulty of discerning the specifically ‘American’ aspect of the new paintings in the face of its broad spectrum of artistic positions”. This ultimately raises the issue of authenticity in the term ‘American-Type’, especially when so many of these artists were trained and influenced from European art movements or were born or immigrated from Europe in the wake and aftermath of the Second World War. To some extent, it could be said that the term ‘American’ was in fact being used as ‘International’, recognising the influx of different ethnicities, cultures and nationalities that had assimilated into American society, and most notably, America’s art scene.
Despite the multitude of styles and influences that resulted in the art of the New York School, much of their work has distinctive differences in the production and process of their work compared to their European predecessors. In terms of the way the New York School utilised their materials and in the processes of producing large scale murals, there was many noticeable differences to that of the avant-garde artists in France. Greenberg claimed that the French valued conventional traits in their art such as ‘finish’ and ‘paint quality’, whereas the American Abstract Expressionists championed a lack in ‘insulating finish’. Greenberg consistently uses a language that conveys the American artists as far more superior to the French avant-garde, characterising French art as “softer, suaver…sumptuous” and the New York School as “fresher…open…immediate”. This is especially true when reflecting on the new conditions for working artists in America; the support provided by Federal Arts Programs gave a breath of fresh air over the outmoded values of the Academy and traditional practises that had previously governed artists work. Greenberg clarifies this in his description of how the New York School’s escapes the stifling past of traditional American art by the canvases as literally coming to life – “the surface manages somehow to breathe”. Due to the fact that many of the artists of the New York School were employed by the WPA, the majority of their works were made for the public and utilised the mural as popular mode for their work. The mural allowed for large scale works that would often encompass an entire wall; the size of these works often “enveloped the viewer and saturated his or her field of vision…changing the relationship between viewer and painting…serving as literal announcements of the grandeur of their makers ambitions”. In this respect, the large scale of their works contributed to the idea that these works were bold, overtly confident and powerful –everything that America as a nation was becoming, both economically and politically, in the mid-twentieth century. Many artists within the New York School created large scale murals - Newman, Rothko and Pollock became well known for this scale in particular. Many of the artists within the New York School were male, which is most poignantly highlighted in a photograph titled The Irascibles taken in 1950.
The Irascibles, Nina Leen, 1950, photograph
Fourteen male American abstract artists posed for a photograph that would appear in Life Magazine after gaining media coverage for a protest to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They rejected the exhibition titled American Painting Today - 1950 and was thrust into the spotlight of what was to be the new avant-garde in art – the New York School. The only female present in the photograph is Hedda Sterne; this photograph, along with much other discourse on the Abstract Expressionists was especially misleading, as there were many active female artists within the New York School: Lee Krasner, Elaine DeKooning, Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan mentioning only a few. Art historian Eleanor Munro clarifies this on the belief that “machismo was part and parcel of a psycho-esthetic that cast male artists as sublime-tongued-and-fingered prophets in touch with the ‘chaos of ecstasy’”.
This rhetoric was also embedded in the writings of Michael Leja who classified that the “New York School artists were deeply rooted in the discourse about modern man” whereby their art was seen as a direct expression regarding the “feeling of crisis concerning the image of humanity, doubt over what was meant by progress and a questioning of the value of science and rational thought” that had culminated from the devastation of previous historical events such as the Second World War and the atomic bomb. Hess demonstrates that such a discourse was “implicitly seen as male, white and heterosexual” and therefore was embedded in the physical rather than passive aspect of the work of New York School, demonstrating a somewhat masculine approach to their art. In Pollock’s large scale works, he emphasised the physical act of painting itself as essential, with the end result being of less concern. Often he would lay the canvas flat on the ground because of size, which in itself was a move away from traditional art practise and the use of the easel. In the film Pollock, he comments on the process of his paintings as relating to the needs of the modern age, that “the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance, or of any other past culture”. Pollock’s list of what constituted this age in American history would have been regarded as ‘masculine’ subjects common in American culture of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Pollock’s gestural approach to art, coined as ‘Action Painting’ by Harold Rosenberg in 1952, reflected a distinctive focus on expression; instead of objectively depicting the aspects of American culture that he highlighted, Pollock would capture them through expression, which Pollock saw as more ‘authentic’, believing that a painting was “meant to be a revelation of the artist’s authentic identity…the gesture, the artists ‘signature’ [as] evidence of the actual process of the work’s creation”. The focus paid to issues of authenticity, validation and confirmation can be traced back again to Hemmingway’s issues with the history of American art, the New York School being catapulted into the limelight of avant-garde and their validation within the global story of art. Although abstract in style, the New York School was often claimed to be the ‘new Realism’, with artists such as Adolph Gottlieb claiming that “so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all…on the contrary, it is the realism of our time”. Rosenberg, when describing Pollock’s work, concluded that this transformation in painting was a focus on the process over everything else, that “what was to go on the canvas was not a picture, but an event”. Rosenberg continued that “the big moment came when it was decided to paint, ‘just to paint’. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value –political, aesthetic, moral”. This importance placed on the gesture and significance of painterly qualities over subject was something that resonated with American culture and history: land expansion through colonisation, industry and its growth in respect of jobs and productions, consumer culture and the impact this had on society -all of these aspects were effectively physical rather than contemplative. Rosenberg highlights this more crucially in his discussion of the New York School’s approach to art and use of the gesture: “At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture, but an event.” The process by which Pollock created his drip painting involved a gestural language, spontaneous movements of his entire body dribbling, flicking and splashing paint upon the canvas. This ‘arena’ for Pollock embraced actions which are seen as quintessentially masculine, violent and aggressive –qualities which made Pollock’s paintings so iconic. Such a description, again, highlights Leja’s inclusion of Modern Man discourse within the New York School, and connotations which are legitimately tied up with America’s political and economic climate in the mid-twentieth century: strong, powerful, dominating. This sense of domination and power is also emphasised in the New York School’s treatment of colour, especially with the Colour-Field Painters such as Rothko and Newman, who were associated more with the second-wave Abstract Expressionists. Here, attention is still paid to the process over form, but was generally much less violent than the gesture that the Action-Painters incorporated into their work; Stella Paul describes these works in contrast, with a “reflective, cerebal focus on more open fields of colour”. Although calm and less severe, they were still grand in scale and had just as much impact on the viewer as Pollock’s drip paintings. Newman demonstrated that by using a minimal and reductive approach, which utilised colour above all else, was a means of, as he put it, “freeing ourselves from the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend and myth that have been the devices of Western European painting”. Here, the Colour-Field painters within the New York School essentially break with the values and traditions of European art and turn inwards, delving solely into the personal and individual, to create a new, innovative and essentially ‘American’ form of expression.
A model stands before a Jackson Pollock painting for a Vogue magazine fashion shoot, Cecil Beaton for ‘Vogue’, 1951, photograph.
The reception of the New York School was critical in determining the ‘American-ness’ of their art which was widely publicised by art critics, collectors and scholars alike. The two most prominent critics of the New York School were Greenberg and Rosenberg. Although they differed greatly in terms of their interpretations of the New York School, both proclaimed an inextricably ‘American’ aspect to the artists working within this group. The very titles of their writings advocated that the production and form of these artists was overtly ‘American’ with Greenberg’s American-Type Painting and Rosenberg’s The American Action-Painters. Exhibitions and collectors of American art continued this kind of approach to emphasising how American the New York School was in displays and shows advocating the development of modern art. The New York School and their innately ‘American’ style was not just positioned within the confines of the art world; paintings by both Pollock and Rothko were used in fashion shoots for Vogue magazine in which clothing was being linked to the stylistic qualities of Abstract Expressionism. In a photograph taken by Cecil Beaton, a model stands before a backdrop of one of Pollock’s drip paintings for a Vogue fashion shoot. The model wears a black dress with a pink ribbon detail, emphasising the black and pink splashes and splatters of paint in Pollock’s work.
Double-page spread on Jackson Pollock, ‘LIFE’ magazine, 1949
Here, the New York School takes on a whole new level of presenting itself as directly ‘American’ by relating to the growing wealth of America’s economy and commodity culture: fashion icons, Hollywood, cinema and celebrity culture listing just a few. This aspect of the ‘celebrity’ was a growing tendency among some of the New York School artists, in particular Pollock, who was catapulted into the limelight. Arnold Newman produced a short colour film of Pollock at work in his studio and Life magazine published a double-page spread dedicated solely to him and his art practice. Both vividly depict Pollock as an icon of American culture: bold, brash and confident. In Life magazine’s photographs of Pollock he is juxtaposed with his art, posed with his arms crossed, leaning casually with a cigarette propped on his lips. Such a description resonates with the photograph The Irascibles mentioned earlier, in which the concept of the American artist-genius/artist-celebrity is further echoed in each artist’s individual and iconic pose, some sitting and some standing, with all their poses emphasising their character, the tormented modern artist in a fast paced world, their gazes directed to the viewer.
This type of reading of Pollock and other members of the New York School falls firmly into traditional ideas of the treatment given to innovative and pivotal artists and the notion of what Ernst Gombrich, an art historian writing several decades later, proposed: “There really is no such thing as Art. There are only artists”. This trajectory situates the New York School within a concrete position in the history of art by placing importance on several artists within the group over specific artworks, as well as conveying the specifically American culture of the late 1940’s and 1950’s. This raises a fundamental issue which is highlighted by the 1958 director of the Whitney Museum, Lloyd Goodrich, in his essay: What is American – in American Art? He begins by determining that “one of the most American traits is our urge to define what is American. This search for a self-image is a result of our relative youth as a civilisation, our years of partial dependence on Europe. But is also a vital part of the process of growth.” His description resonances with many themes of American culture frequently addressed far before the 1945 moment, when the New York School came into being: the takeover of the West, expansion, immigration, progress, the growth of unions and industry, commodity culture –the list is endless. Perhaps it is possible to place a certain sense of youth and resulting maturity in the lifespan of the New York School which embodied so much of American culture, not just becoming a superpower globally, but also in its positioning as the capital of the art world. Michael Leja sums up America’s maturity as being the significant shift from Paris to New York, and the characteristics of an art style which portrayed the values of America both so implicitly and explicitly at the same time:
“Abstract Expressionism is taken to be a high-cultural correlate of the country’s military, economic and technological rise to pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere during and after the World War II. Not only is it believed to mark the coming to maturity and independence of the visual arts in the United States, but also it is generally interpreted as the quintessential artistic embodiment of the qualities and ideals that the nation’s mainstream, middle-class culture holds dearest: individual freedom, boldness, ingenuity, grand ambition, expansiveness, confidence, power.”
- Leja, M., ‘Framing Abstract Expressionism’ in Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940’s, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993, p.5
Such a description encapsulates the New York School outside of the constraints of the art world; penetrating every aspect of American life and culture. The artists of the New York School themselves were a catalyst in presenting individual and unique character traits of the American identity, be it Pollock’s brashness, Rothko’s contemplation or de Kooning’s playfulness. The production, form and reception of these works build a portfolio of ‘American-ness’ within the New York School; the effect this has had on the concept of the ideal American icon is profound. Perhaps if we are to search for what is so precisely ‘American’ in these works, then great emphasis needs not to be on what we see, the visual, but rather what we ‘experience’. Such importance is placed on the gesture, the ‘doing’, that perhaps it is necessary to focus on the active elements that are still apparent within these works; the publications that critics wrote, the speeches they gave, the brush marks left. Nothing emphasises this more poignantly than Rothko’s reflection on the element of ‘mythmaking’ within the New York School: “the picture deals not with a particular anecdote, but rather with the spirit of myth, which is generic to all myths at all times”. It is this ‘spirit’ that marks the New York School as wholly and authentically ‘American’; Rothko also states: “no possible set of notes can explain our paintings. Their explanation must come out of a consummated experience between picture and onlooker”. Here Rothko emphasises on the lack of the objective, the universal language of the New York School, which perhaps could establish the New York School as both a specifically American and global style of art.
Bibliography
Books:
Chadwick, W., Women, Art and Society, London: Thames & Hudson, 1990
Rubinstein, C.S., American Women Artists: from Early Indian Times to the Present, Massachusetts: G.K. Hall, 1982
Underwood, S.L., Charles H. Caffin: A Voice for Modernism 1897-1918, Ann Arbour: University of Michigan Press, 1983
Essays in Edited Books:
Baigell, M., ‘American Art and National Identity’ in Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings, edited by Calo, M.A., Colorado: Westview Press, 1998
Corn, W.M., ‘Coming of Age: Historical Scholarship in American Art’ in Critical Issues in American Art: A Book of Readings, edited by Calo, M.A., Colorado: Westview Press, 1998
Gombrich, E.H., ‘Introduction’, in The Story of Art, London: Phaidon, 2008
Greenberg, C., ‘”American –Type” Painting’, 1955, in Greenberg, C., The Collected Essays, Vol.2, ed, O’Brian, J., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988
Greenberg, C., ‘Contribution to a Symposium’ in Art and Culture: Critical Essays, Beacon Press, 1971
Guilbaut, S., ‘Disdain for the Stain: Abstract Expressionism and Tachisme’ in Abstract Expressionism: The International Context ed. Marter, J., New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007
Guilbaut, S., ‘The Second World War and the Attempt to Establish an Independent American Art’ in How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985
Hemmingway, A., ‘American Art Pre-1940 and the Problem of Art History’s Object’, in Internationalizing the History of American Art, Pittsburgh: Pennysylvania State University Press, 2009
Hess, B., ‘Abstract Expressionism: A Constant Searching of Oneself’ in Holzwarth, H.W., Modern Art: Volume 2 1945-2000 Abstract Expressionism to Today, China: Taschen, 2011
Leja, M., ‘Framing Abstract Expressionism’ in Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940’s, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993
Leja, M.,’Modern Man and Woman’ in Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940’s, Yale: Yale University Press, 1997
Rosenberg, H., ‘The American Action Painter’ in The Tradition of the New, Da Capo Press, 1994Shapiro, D., ‘Abstract Expressionism: The Politics of Apolitical Painting’ in Frascina, F., Pollock and After: The Critical Debate, London: Routledge, 2000
Journals:
Gottlieb, A., ‘The Ideas of Art’ in Tiger’s Eye, Vol.1, December 1947
Film:
Pollock, Film, Director Harris, E., Writers: Naifeh, S., Smith, G.W., Sony Pictures Classics, 2002, 122 minutes
Websites:
Abstract Expressionism, Museum of Modern Art, [online] https://www.moma.org/cef/abex/html/know_more13.html
Myth-Making: Abstract Expressionism from the United States, Tate, [online] http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/myth-making-abstract-expressionist-painting-united-states