Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s - Hardcover

Leja, Michael

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300044615 ISBN 13: 9780300044614

Verlag: Yale University Press, 1993

Inhaltsangabe

A study of abstract expressionism as seen in the works of Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning and other New York School artists in the wake of World War II. The author argues that the work of these artists reflects an attempt to reformulate individual identity through psychology and philosophy.

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Reseña del editor

In the wake of World War II, the paintings of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, and other New York School artists participated in a culture-wide initiative to reimagine the self. At a time when widely held beliefs about human nature and the human condition were coming to seem to many commentators increasingly outdated and inadequate, Abstract Expressionism gave compelling visual form to a new subjectivity - a new experience and idea of self. In this original and wide-ranging study, Michael Leja argues that the interest of these artists in tapping "primitive" and "unconscious" components of self aligns them with many contemporary essayists, Hollywood filmmakers, journalists, and popular philosophers who were turning, like the artists, to psychology, anthropology, and philosophy in the effort to reformulate individual identity. Taking Pollock's paintings and their reception as a case study, Leja shows that critics located in Pollock's abstract forms a web of metaphors - including spatial entrapment, conflicted production, energy flow, gendered opposition, and unconsciousness - that situated the paintings in mainstream cultural discourses on the individual's sense of self and identity. In this interpretative frame, the cultural and ideological character of the art is illuminated. According to Leja, Abstract Expressionism effectively enacted and represented the new, conflicted, layered subjectivity, a feature that helps to account for the support and interest it garnered from cultural and political institutions alike.

Reseña del editor

In this original and wide-ranging study, Michael Leja argues that Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, and other Abstract Expressionist artists were part of a culture-wide initiative to reimagine the self. Leja demonstrates that the interests of these New York School artists in tapping "primitive" and unconscious components of self aligns them with many contemporary essayists, Hollywood filmmakers, journalists, and popular philosophers of the period.

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Yale University Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 1993
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0300044615
• ISBN 13: 9780300044614
• Einband: Tapa dura
• Anzahl der Seiten: 416
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar