Abstract Expressionism Research Articles

Can Young Children Distinguish Abstract Expressionist Art From Superficially Similar Works by Preschoolers and Animals?

While it is sometimes claimed that abstract art requires little skill and is indistinguishable from the scribbles of young children, recent research has shown that even adults with no training in art can distinguish works by abstract expressionists from superficially similar works by children and even elephants, monkeys, and apes (Hawley-Dolan & Winner, 2011). We presented 4-7- and 8-10-year-olds with 18 paired images, one in each pair by an abstract expressionist and the other by a child or animal, and asked which they preferred and which was better. Each participant viewed the first third of the pairs unlabeled and the rest either with correct or reversed labels (artist, and child, monkey, or elephant). Three unexpected findings emerged. First, even 4-7-year-olds can distinguish works by artists from superficially similar works by children and animals when there are no labels to guide them. Second, children’s aesthetic responses are not aligned with those of adults: children often chose works labeled child or animal whether or not this label was correct, and sometimes justified their choices by crediting the effort the child or animal had made (e.g., “it’s really good for an elephant”). Finally, children, like adults, were more likely to select artist images when making quality judgments than when indicating preferences, showing that they make a distinction between intuitive preference responses and more cognitive quality judgment responses. That even preschoolers can discriminate between works by abstract expressionists and works by children and animals underscores what is wrong with the oft-heard statement, “My kid could have done that.”

Fashion Illustration by Applying Children Pictures’ Traits of Action Paintings for Expression

Background : The current trend of fashion illustration reflects a change from emphasizing visible art to pursuing the value of art itself more and more. And in the other, the expression method by casualty of the realm of infant painting is constant with the action painting of the current trend of painting. Focusing on that point, I try to compare the traits of each thing and make a new fashion illustration by using only things from action painting. The goal of this research is to improve the value of illustration and the artistic position of original fashion illustration through it. Methods : This study was progressed by reference and case research. At first, I explored the concept and traits of action painting to survey case researches of the casualty expression method of infant painting. Second, I analyzed the similarities and differences between the casualty expression method of infant painting and action painting methods. Finally, I created a work by applying the original characteristics of action painting to infant fashion illustration based on these two studies Result : As a result, when comparing infant fashion illustration incorporating action painting with existing infant fashion illustration, I found that unconscious expression and inner desires are more dramatically expressed, and an even stronger energy and dynamic is created by using a different kind of media and different tools. Finally, I was able to convey more effective fashion images by repeating the processes of drying and dripping paints, so a deeper expression of colors with time was achieved. Conclusion : Through this study, I could suggest a new method of fashion illustration utilizing infant expression and differentiated features. The creative methods can continue to be expanded and it is ultimately relevant to improve the artistic value of fashion illustration.

Your kid could not have done that: Even untutored observers can discern intentionality and structure in abstract expressionist art

Can people with no special knowledge about art detect the skill, intentionality, and expressed meanings in non-representational art? Hawley-Dolan and Winner (2011) showed participants without training in art images of abstract expressionist paintings paired with superficially similar works by children or animals and asked them which they preferred and which was a better work of art. Participants selected the works by artists in response to both questions at a rate above chance. In Study 1, we used the same image pairs but asked a more direct question: which painting is by the artist rather than the child or animal? Individuals with no familiarity with abstract expressionism correctly identified the artists’ works at a rate significantly above chance. In Study 2 participants saw each image singly and were asked whether it was by an artist or a child or animal. Participants unfamiliar with abstract expressionism again correctly identified the source of the works at a rate above chance. Study 3 demonstrated that this discrimination is made on the basis of perceived intentionality and perceived structure. People see more than they think they do in abstract art. These findings tell us something about the nature of non-figurative art. They also tell us something about the human tendency to ferret out intentionality.

Art in America, 1945-1970: writings from the age of abstract expressionism, pop art, and minimalism

In the quarter century after the end of World War II, a new generation of painters, sculptors, and photographers transformed the face of America art and shifted the centre of the art world from Paris to New York. This revolution generated an exuberant and contentious body of writing without parallel in our cultural history. Jed Perl has gathered the best of this writing together for the first time, interwoven with fascinating headnotes that establish the nature of the aesthetic battles that defined the era.

Pratiques et enjeux du détournement dans le discours littéraire des XXͤ et XXIͤ siècles éd. par Nathalie Dupont et Éric Trudel

Reviews 265 entreprise qui esquive le dialogue avec les autres arts et où, plutôt que d’exiger une confrontation méthodique des notions, l’on se contente de faire allusion au célèbre dicton de Mies van der Rohe. On finit par se convaincre à la fois de la “faillite conceptuelle du minimalisme”(12) en critique littéraire et de la grande inventivité d’écrivains singuliers dont on connaît désormais les trajectoires ultérieures. Johns Hopkins University (MD) Derek Schilling Dupont, Nathalie, et Éric Trudel, éd. Pratiques et enjeux du détournement dans le discours littéraire des XXe et XXIe siècles. Québec: PU du Québec, 2012. ISBN 9872 -7605-3215-1. Pp. 177. $24 Can. The introduction explains that“détournement”in literature (the everyday meanings are: embezzling funds, hijacking an airplane, or corrupting a minor) refers to verbal analogues of tagging, repurposing, recycling, collage, and bricolage (tinkering). The essays offered here will not be useful for undergraduate courses in French studies, but a few of the better ones describe transformational practices that might suggest some recreational writing assignments in advanced courses. Lautréamont in the Poésies, the Cubists, and the Surrealists were the forefathers of the long-lasting, prolific OULIPO movement that played with rule-governed thematic and structural variations. Alison James (“Formes et fonctions du détournement oulipien” [59–73]) places such subversion in a Hegelian perspective, as the negation of a negation.An affirmation of new social and esthetic values leads to suppression, countered in turn by liberation. James provides many examples, with cogent commentary.Alain Farah (91–104) describes“La Révolution Poétic’ [sic] d’Olivier Cadiot,”who created a sensation without composing a single sentence of his works. Standing by a table, he cut and pasted clippings while kinetically involving his whole body (cf. “Action Painting”) and making every page into a “painting,” a compositional nexus. He eliminated anything that might suggest a human subject as representamen: recognizable body parts and sense impressions, reports of thoughts and memories, or intimations of a soul (faith, hope, epiphanies). Thus he betrays a desire for angelism.Alexandre Trudel discusses Guy Debord (1931– 94), who founded the Internationale Situationniste in 1957. It hoped to suppress art and to achieve an authentic “revolution of daily life.” During the Événements of May 1968, this movement denounced conventional politics as a bourgeois spectacle, lacking the authenticity of workers’ councils. Later retreating to a contestatory esthetics, Debord tried to create a mythical self by interweaving passages from newspapers, the Code Civil, and autobiographical elements. He entered a “post-Situationist” phase in 1976, with his definitive work, the film In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni (1978), and its Biblical resonances. In conclusion, Jan Baetens discusses “Frédéric Boyer: le détournement comme quête de sens” (161–73) as trying to silence the commonplace by quoting from its utterances (like Flaubert in Bouvard et Pécuchet and the“Sottisier”). Boyer creates parasites (static that interferes with communication), embedding a fragmented conversation within a fragmented news report. He creates a structure en entonnoir (in this instance, a diminishing series) with a superimposed narrative progression. Then he introduces more shocking contrasts than before, or new forms. Boyer’s Goût du suicide lent (1999) tries to elevate the sordid to the level of the sublime. It is less a montage (a preplanned constellation of elements) than a collage, seeking, above all, the unusual. One comes away feeling that such a strenuous pursuit of eccentricity—like others described in this volume—disqualifies itself by straining to startle hoi polloi who, however, placidly persist in chewing their cud, not even paying the tribute of an upward glance. Oberlin College Affiliate Scholar (OH) Laurence M. Porter Ernaux, Annie. Retour à Yvetot. Paris: Mauconduit, 2013. ISBN 979-10-90566-08-8. Pp. 78. 9 a. Betrayal of one’s social class is a steep price paid for education in the lower social classes. Simply stated, this theme lies below the surface of Ernaux’s writings. Ernaux married into a bourgeois setting and left behind her father’s peasant and workingclass conditions. In La honte (1997) and La vie ext...

Evolving self portraits with Mandelbrot math

This paper describes an experiment in self-portraiture using variations of the Mandelbrot set, and explores the concept of abstraction and realism, and how fractals can be used for figurative art. A digital image of the artist's face is used in a genetic algorithm as a fitness function. Mathematical functions are derived from manipulating the real and imaginary parts of the Mandelbrot set equation, whereby extra variables are added and adjusted using the genetic algorithm. Considerations are given regarding how well the process of iteration in the complex plane can be used for imitative imagery. The limitations are not seen as obstacles, but as an opportunity to explore image-making that lies between abstraction and figurative form. The platonic view of the Mandelbrot set is considered in terms of how this process alters it for visual poetics, at the expense of mathematical rigor. The process-oriented nature of abstract expressionist action painting is compared and contrasted with the mathematical dynamics, along with the gesture-like features that are brought forth through the process of iteration in the complex plane.

Tra storia e leggenda. Indagini sul network artistico tra Sofonisba Anguissola, Giulio Clovio e Levina Teerlinc

The article explores the relation between two miniature painters: the Croatian Giulio Clovio and the Fleming Levina Teerlinc. The starting point of this research is a letter written in the 1540s, which is written by Annibal Caro in name of Giulio Clovio. The letter is addressed to a young nameless female miniature painter. This female miniature painter can be identified as Levina Teerlinc because of a corresponding characteristics and profile. The focal point of this letter is an exchange of self-portraits between Clovio and the female painter. Proof that it is Levina Teerlinc who sends Clovio her self-portrait is to be found in the testament of the Croatian artist, that reminds «il ritratto di Livinia meniatrice» or «the portrait of Livinia miniature painter». Historiography connected the event to the portrait of Giulio Clovio, painted by the hand of Sofonisba Anguissola. In this portrait the Croatian is depicted with a portrait miniature in his hand. Federico Zeri, owner of the portrait until 1998, believed that the miniature portrayed Levina Teerlinc. This present article argues that the miniature is a self-portrait of Sofonisba Anguissola. Evidence for this can be found in another portrait of this painter of Cremona. In the portrait of her master Bernardino Campi, Anguissola depicts Campi in the action of painting her portrait, which essentially is a self-portrait. In both paintings, the master paints a portrait of his pupil Sofonsiba: Bernardino Campi is her master for painting, while Giulio Clovio is her master for miniature painting. Clovio, just like Campi, is depicted in the act of painting, with the brush in his hand and his eye focussed on the viewer. Further, the article describes exhaustively the provenance of the portrait of Clovio. It particularly emphasises the typology of headgear the miniature painter wears and compares it with a similar sample worn by a contemporary Englishman. Finally, this study proposes to give some answers to unresolved questions about the relationship between Clovio and Levina. The article individuates Francisco de Holanda as an intermediary between the two. Further, it rectifies the birth and wedding date of Levina and confirms her absence in Flanders even before her English period. This means that it cannot be excluded that Levina Teerlinc spent a period in Italy around the 1540s and that she might have been a student of Giulio Clovio.

An Action Painting of Neuroscience in a Frame Too TightAn Action Painting of Neuroscience in a Frame Too Tight

An Action Painting of Neuroscience in a Frame Too TightAn Action Painting of Neuroscience in a Frame Too Tight

Lustro w funkcji parergonu i jako miejsce refleksji na temat obrazu. Przykład „Zaślubin Arnolfinich” Jana van Eycka

For centuries, a mirror has been an important subject in discussions on art. The mutual relation of a picture and a mirror has been a general problem of an artistic image. The artists aware of a mirror’s values not only used it as a tool in picture creating process, but – what seems to occur more often – made it the picture’s essential element. About 1434 Jan van Eyck painted a mirror in ‘The Arnolfini Marriage’. Although it functions in the painting as an addition only – by its central position in the composition, distinguished by the means of a frame and its mimetic character – competes in attracting the viewer’s attention and changes the way of the work perception, gaining equivalent position with its principal subject. The mirror serves, therefore, as an exceptional parergon – it reveals spaces from beyond ergon, still remaining its part. The mirror’s specificity (parergon) in Jan van Eyck’s painting is based on the fact, that it is also a kind of the artist’s signature. It incorporates to the picture, what is not directly situated in it, i.e., the act of painting itself. Presence of the mirror in the picture makes the boundaries between the real world, the one presented in the image and the fiction seen in the mirror disappear. As a parergon the mirror becomes a ‘bridge’ to a complete understanding of the picture and a place for reflection on its creation.

The Cage-iness of Abstract Expressionism

Through a consideration of the exchanges between John Cage and the Abstract Expressionist painters at Black Mountain College and The Club in the early 1950s, this article suggests a new reading of Abstract Expressionism that jettisons stylistic designations and typical postwar divisions to reveal the artists’ deep social concerns and critique of Cold War ideology. A shared interest in vitalism and Zen, evident in weekly discussions at The Club and in Harold Rosenberg’s definition of Action Painting, reveals the artists’ commitment to breaking down the barriers between art and life, a defining condition of postwar radicality more typically signaled by the work of Cage and Robert Rauschenberg.

What was Abstract Expressionism? Abstract Expressionism after Aboriginal Art

expressionism is among the many Western art movements that Aboriginal art has been compared to. That is to say, Aboriginal art is understood through abstract expressionism. But what would happen if we reversed the poles and understood abstract expressionism through Aboriginal art? One of the things that Aboriginal art might bring to our understanding of abstract expressionism is a sense of meaningfulness, or even of meaningfulness without meaning. Indeed, it is by means of this category that we might distinguish abstract expressionism from abstract art in general. In this paper, I will outline this distinction through the work of the American philoso- pher Stanley Cavell, and attempt to show how it plays out in the criticism of one of Cavell's great followers, the art historian Michael Fried. We will see how the search for the 'intention' behind abstract expressionism is replaced by the need to find the 'motivation' that drives abstraction. It is for this reason that something ended in art with the passing of abstract expressionism, at least until it returned with the arrival of contem- porary Aboriginal art. ***

Viewing art through information visualization: A case study of bob ross's the joy of painting

This poster examines data about 403 images that appeared on Bob Ross's PBS series, The Joy of Painting. We analyzed a set of 3324 tags that described his artistic output - . Looking at this set of data suggests more complex themes-emotion, memory, and the act of painting itself- underlie Ross's landscapes. It presents a model for considering other artists with large oeuvre and large image sets. With digitization, information professionals have often considered how to construct metadata, tags, and controlled vocabularies to make images searchable. Less frequently have they considered how researchers might use those classification systems, quantitative data derived from them, and visualizations of them to assess an artist or historical period's visual culture. Using Bob Ross as a case study, we utilized information visualization techniques to analyze the contents of artwork through the trajectory of artistic creation.

Art, Science, Words, and IMRAD

In the 1920s, the visual arts expanded beyond painting and sculpture. Most interesting was that they moved closer to texts. The development of the publishing industry, typography, and advertising during this decade coincided with the Dadaists' approach, which defined art much wider than before. Artists such as Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) started using “found” and industrially manufactured objects and referred extensively to mass culture (1–3). Thus, text became increasingly included in art works and, in some instances, became a piece of art itself. For example, the Bauhaus artists worked with, and invented, new fonts. Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948) created collages that contained text and newsprint (4). With time, text gained even greater importance. The issue of language and meaning was taken up by Rene Magritte, a surrealist. Abstract art, such as the works of abstract expressionists in the 1940s and 1950s, customarily included extensive textual explanations. Still later in the 20th century, verbal or textual descriptions of ideas became central to conceptual art. The …

Abstract Expressionism and the Communication Problem

Some philosophers have recently suggested that the reason mathematics is useful in science is that it expands our expressive capacities. Of these philosophers, only Stephen Yablo has put forward a detailed account of how mathematics brings this advantage. In this article, I set out Yablo’s view and argue that it is implausible. Then, I introduce a simpler account and show it is a serious rival to Yablo’s. 1 Introduction 2 Yablo’s Expressionism 3 Psychological Objections to Yablo’s Expressionism 4 Introducing Belief Expressionism 5 Objections and Replies 5.1 Yablo’s likely response 5.2 Charity 6 Conclusion

A. B. Jackson and the ‘black art’ paradigm

Abstract This brief biography introduces the life of American painter Alexander Brooks ‘A. B.’ Jackson (1925–1981) and seeks to better establish his place in the annals of American Art and Education history. A student of renowned colour field painter Josef Albers at Yale, and the first black professor at Old Dominion University in Virginia, Jackson represents a connection between the teaching methods of Germany’s Bauhaus design school and the politics and aesthetics of segregation in America during the 1960s and 1970s. Art by African American artists of Jackson’s generation is often examined either in terms of a radicalized political stance, or in the context of abstract expressionism – often linked to the self-described (or presumed) rhythm and attitudes of African American identity. Jackson’s work and professional identity did not adhere to the trends spurred by the nation’s heated racial tensions, and therefore defies current educational and aesthetic categorization. A deeper understanding of Jackson’s experience, methods as an artist, and greater body of work are sought through interviews, archival research, and an examination of why his presence amongst the greater perception of ‘black art’ is largely omitted from scholarly resources.

“You are no stranger to me”

“You are no stranger to me”

Catherine Craft/An Audience of artists : Dada, Neo-Dada and the emergence of Abstract Expressionism

Le livre de Catherine Craft se developpe autour de l’interchangeabilite des roles entre artiste et spectateur, posee comme caracteristique fondamentale des expressions verbales et picturales muries dans le contexte de la « School of New York ». Le fait qu’a l’origine de chaque production artistique il soit possible de retracer un tissu complexe d’impregnations est mis en evidence a travers cette analyse soignee et passionnante - le sujet etant jusqu’a present tres peu traite dans de plus ampl...

An audience of artists: Dada, neo-Dada, and the emergence of Abstract Expressionism

The term Neo-Dada surfaced in New York in the late 1950s and was used to characterize young artists like Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns whose art appeared at odds with the serious emotional and painterly interests of the then-dominant movement, abstract expressionism. Neo-Dada quickly became the word of choice in the early 1960s to designate experimental art, including assemblage, performance, pop art, and nascent forms of minimal and conceptual art. An Audience of Artists turns this time line for the postwar New York art world on its head, presenting a new pedigree for these artistic movements. Drawing on an array of previously unpublished material, Catherine Craft reveals that Neo-Dada, far from being a reaction to abstract expressionism, actually originated at the heart of that movement's concerns about viewers, originality, and artists' debts to the past and one another. Furthermore, she argues, the original Dada movement was not incompatible with abstract expressionism. In fact, Dada provided a vital historical reference for artists and critics seeking to come to terms with the radical departure from tradition that abstract expressionism seemed to represent. Tracing the activities of artists such as Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, and Jackson Pollock alongside Marcel Duchamp's renewed embrace of Dada in the late 1940s, Craft composes a subtle exploration of the challenges facing artists trying to work in the wake of a destructive world war and the paintings, objects, writings, and installations that resulted from their efforts. Providing the first examination of the roots of the Neo-Dada phenomenon, this groundbreaking study significantly reassesses the histories of these three movements and offers new ways of understanding the broader issues related to the development of modern art.

Painted letters: the later writings of Roger Hilton

This essay focuses principally on the illustrated letters Roger Hilton wrote from his sickbed during his final years (1973–1975). Known as the ‘Night Letters’, these works are renowned for their fusions of word and image; though mostly addressed to his wife Rose, they anticipate a wider readership. Hilton once wrote that artists should remain silent on their work, but in these letters he not only discourses on the nature of art, but attempts to unify the act of writing with the act of spontaneous painting. Hilton's letters may be taken to be at once honest and deceptive, private and public, specific and general. On first inspection they appear to give a remarkably frank account of his opinions and the sources of his creativity; yet this forthrightness also owes something to Hilton's notoriously rebarbative personality, and the letters equally reveal him to be just as inclined towards obfuscation, braggadocio, and prejudice as towards self-knowledge and honesty, whilst revealing too the debilitating effects of his alcoholism. With recourse to performative theory, the concept of action painting, and the notion of Confessionalism in poetry, the author suggests ways in which Hilton's writings and paintings can both re-evoke and transcend the immediate moment of composition, and how they may ultimately be seen to exceed the limitations of the single self. He argues that the letters’ combination of writing, drawing, and painting amounts to a breaking down of generic boundaries that presents a challenge to distinctions between word and image.

The Abstract Expressionists and Les Automatistes: A shared multi-fractal depth?

Statistical analysis of abstract paintings is becoming an increasingly important tool for understanding the creative process of visual artists. We present a multifractal analysis of ‘poured’ paintings from the Abstract Expressionism and Les Automatistes movements. The box-counting dimension (D0) is measured for the analyzed paintings, as is the associated multifractal depth ΔD=D0−D∞, where D∞ is the asymptotic dimension. We investigate the role of depth by plotting a ‘phase space’ diagram that examines the relationship between D0 and D∞. We show that, although the D0 and D∞ values vary between individual paintings, the collection of paintings exhibit a similar depth, suggesting a shared visual characteristic for this genre. We discuss the visual implications of this result.