Two Methodologies for the Interpretation of Abstract Expressionism

Abstract

Part I: Notes Towards a Psychodynamic Theory for Historians of Art Of all recent American art movements, Abstract Expressionism is the one most often recognized as being open to psychological or poetic interpretation. The statements and experience of the artists involved, and the highly symbolic content of their creations, demand a hermeneutics capable of revealing meanings that transcend the literal. What follows is intended to prompt thought and discussion concerning the interpretation of Abstract Expressionism (and perhaps the visual arts in general). Part 1 is presented as notes towards a theory of art and psychodynamics. This is an impossibly complex subject for which. among other problems, adequate biographical materials are unavailable. It is understood, however, that the “meaning” of a work of art is “overdetermined”—and that psychodynamic factors must be included in a hermeneutic equation that also recognizes the influence of the creator's milieu, religion, socioeconomic status, craft tradition, sexual identity, and life-course development. Given the limitations of space and documentation, I shall restrict the “problems for study” at the end of each theoretical section for the most part to Jackson Pollock and Arshile Gorky, about whose lives and art sufficient information is available. In Part 2 I have refrained from taking Baudelaire up on the writing of elegies—poems of lamentation being best reserved for certain artists and movements subsequent to those here considered.