abstract expressionism essay questions

Abstract Expressionism

Summary of Abstract Expressionism

"Abstract Expressionism" was never an ideal label for the movement, which developed in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. It was somehow meant to encompass not only the work of painters who filled their canvases with fields of color and abstract forms, but also those who attacked their canvases with a vigorous gestural expressionism. Still Abstract Expressionism has become the most accepted term for a group of artists who held much in common. All were committed to art as expressions of the self, born out of profound emotion and universal themes, and most were shaped by the legacy of Surrealism , a movement that they translated into a new style fitted to the post-war mood of anxiety and trauma. In their success, these New York painters robbed Paris of its mantle as leader of modern art, and set the stage for America's dominance of the international art world.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

• Political instability in Europe in the 1930s brought several leading Surrealists to New York, and many of the Abstract Expressionists were profoundly influenced by Surrealism's focus on mining the unconscious. It encouraged their interest in myth and archetypal symbols and it shaped their understanding of painting itself as a struggle between self-expression and the chaos of the subconscious.
• Most of the artists associated with Abstract Expressionism matured in the 1930s. They were influenced by the era's leftist politics, and came to value an art grounded in personal experience. Few would maintain their earlier radical political views, but many continued to adopt the posture of outspoken avant-gardists .
• Having matured as artists at a time when America suffered economically and felt culturally isolated and provincial, the Abstract Expressionists were later welcomed as the first authentically American avant-garde . Their art was championed for being emphatically American in spirit - monumental in scale, romantic in mood, and expressive of a rugged individual freedom.
• Although the movement has been largely depicted throughout historical documentation as one belonging to the paint-splattered, heroic male artist, there were several important female Abstract Expressionists that arose out of New York and San Francisco during the 1940s and '50s who now receive credit as elemental members of the canon.

Key Artists

Overview of Abstract Expressionism

In 1943 the noted art collector and gallerist Peggy Guggenheim commissioned Jackson Pollock to paint a mural for her apartment vestibule. Though Mural (1943) was the first commission and large scale work for the then unknown artist, he procrastinated for months, supposedly completing it in all night session just before Guggenheim's deadline. The painting launched his career as the leading artist of the then emerging Abstract Expressionism, and the story of its inception became part of his legend and myth.

Artworks and Artists of Abstract Expressionism

1957-D-No. 1 (1957)

Artist: Clyfford Still

In the early 1940s Clyfford Still, like many other artists of the time, was primarily a representational painter, evoking moody dark scenes in somber colors. By the mid 1940s his work began to change with the appearances of dashes and jags of colored lines atop his paintings. This marked his own shift into Abstract Expressionism as a non-objective painter interested in juxtaposing different colors and surfaces into a variety of formations. Although known for being one of the prominent Color Field painters, Still's hot bursts and crackly lines of vivid hues that conjure tears and gashes were distinct from say Rothko's more simplified washes of color, or Newman's thin lines. This can be seen in 1957-D-No. 1 , a large work that recalls natural shapes and phenomena reminiscent of cave stalagmites, caverns, and other mysterious elements that lie just beneath the surface of our everyday conscious recognition. The relationships within Still's compositional ingredients, of foreground and background, bring to mind life's dance between light and dark - something Still loved expressing, a self-described "life and death merging in fearful union."

Oil on canvas - Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Autumn Rhythm (Number 30) (1950)

Artist: Jackson Pollock

The piece is exemplary of Pollock's famous "drip" works in which paint was poured, splattered, and applied by the artist in an extremely physical fashion from above to a canvas which lay on the ground. This process of expressing an internal emotional turbulence through gesture, line, texture, and composition represented a breakthrough for Pollock in his career and helped put the New York School of painters on the map. These paintings became the impetus for critic Rosenberg's coining of the term Action Painting. And this unlikely combination of chance and control became tantamount to Abstract Expressionism's evolution.

Enamel on canvas - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

Excavation (1950)

Artist: Willem de Kooning

Excavation is one of Willem de Kooning's most renowned works, and a true depiction of his Abstract Expressionist style. In it, we see a multitude of outlined forms that are abstractions of familiar shapes right on the periphery of recognition: fishes, birds, jaws, eyes and teeth. De Kooning has said of his work, "I paint this way because I can keep putting more and more things in - drama, anger, pain, love, a figure, a horse, my ideas about space." After this frenzied pile up of imagery, de Kooning would then, with signature chaos and deliberation, remove, scrape and add paint until he unearthed what he wanted. The resulting piece presented a true excavation of the artist's mind and movements in the moment. De Kooning remains one of the most seminal gestural "action painters" who worked often with broad brushstrokes and in light, pastel palettes. He sought authenticity of experience, not only in the making of his paintings but also in the representation of the experience on canvas.

Oil and enamel on canvas - The Art Institute of Chicago

Vir heroicus sublimis (1950-51)

Artist: Barnett Newman

Translated as "Man, heroic and sublime," Vir heroicus sublimis was, at 95"x213", Newman's largest painting at the time it was completed, although he would go on to create even more expansive works. In it we see a vast field of dark red punctuated twice with vertical lines that Newman coined "zips." He believed that this abbreviated signature motif could communicate qualities of humanity which found echoes in ancient art. He intended audiences to view his paintings from a close vantage point, allowing the colors to fully surround them - hence he was considered to be a Color Field painter. He also felt the intimacy the painting provoked was much akin to two people meeting and the kind of inherent chemistry that evoked. Although Newman's work was important to the movement for its scale and simplicity, it was this relationship between painting and viewer that was most notable. Mel Bochner, an artist associated with Conceptualism, remembered encountering it at MoMA in the late 1960s and realizing that its size and color created a new kind of contact between art and the viewer. "A woman standing there [looking at it] was covered with red," he recalled. "I realized it was the light shining on the painting reflecting back, filling the space between the viewer and the artwork that created the space, the place. And that that reflection of the self of the painting, the painting as the subject reflected on the viewer, was a wholly new category of experience." Similar philosophies, of a stripped down experience between painting and onlooker, would be seen later in the work of the Minimalists.

Oil on canvas - The Museum of Modern Art, New York

No. 6 (Violet, Green, Red) (1951)

Artist: Mark Rothko

Mark Rothko's work exemplifies Abstract Expressionism's Color Field paintings. Each piece is titled by color variations, and all consist of soft, rectangular bands of color stretching horizontally across the canvas. Violet, Green and Red is a prime example of this kind of chromatic abstraction. Color Field painters were concerned with brushstroke and paint texture, but they came to view color as the most powerful communication tool. Rothko's blocks of color were meant to strike up a relationship with the viewer's deep consciousness, to provide a contemplative, meditative space in which to visually investigate one's own moods and affiliations with the chosen palette. He sought to distill an essence, or true nature, out of codified hues. Along with his friend, the painter Adolph Gottlieb, Rothko wrote a series of statements in 1943 to explain his work. In one, they wrote: "We favor the simple expression of the complex thought."

Oil on canvas - Private Collection

Chief (1950)

Artist: Franz Kline

Franz Kline started his career in figuration and was known to project large images of his drawings on the wall to use in for his paintings. One day he blew an image up too large resulting in only a fraction of it appearing in bold, thick black strokes. He was so taken by the abstraction that he was inspired to start painting them. The pieces, although entirely unrecognizable as to their original subject, still seemed to reverberate with an energy that connected them believably to their titles. Kline's work was also noted for its energetic palette of bold black and white strokes; he made a note to always paint the white rather than relying on the canvas to take on that color's role. Kline's work typifies that of the "action painters" celebrated by Harold Rosenberg. But no matter how energetic and urgent his pictures seemed to be, they were always carefully considered in their execution. So much so that critics have speculated wildly on the sources behind images such as this one. Chief was the name of a locomotive Kline remembered from his childhood, and it's possible to read the image as a sensory reminiscence of its power, sound, and steaming engine. Some also believed that the artist's obsession with black was connected to his childhood spent in a coal-mining community dominated by heavy industry.

Mountains and Sea (1952)

Artist: Helen Frankenthaler

Frankenthaler was introduced to the New York art scene through her friend, the critic Clement Greenberg and she spent a summer in 1950 studying with Hans Hoffman. She was at the Betty Parsons Gallery for Jackson Pollock's debut show and said of it: "It was all there. I wanted to live in this land. I had to live there, and master the language." Which she did, becoming an active painter for the next six decades. Mountains and Sea (1952) is one of Frankenthaler's most important works and first major paintings executed when she was only twenty-three. Not only is it monumental in size at 7 x 10 feet; it also reflects the artist's departure from traditional mediums and surface and the onset of her signature technique. Rather than treating paint as a layer meant to sit on top of the canvas, she thinned oils (and later switched to acrylics) with turpentine to the consistency of watercolor. She would then place large swaths of unprimed canvas onto the floor and through a highly physical dance of pouring, dripping, sponging, rolling and mopping, would apply the liquid washes. The effect was one of staining - the paint would completely sink into the canvas creating an integrated, transparent effect. Much like the other Abstract Expressionists, this process allowed for both control and spontaneity. The piece was inspired by Frankenthaler's trip to Nova Scotia and is reflective of her interest in achieving luminosity on the canvas. Landscape would continue to inspire her work, which has become synonymous with some of the most innovative Color Field investigations to arise from the movement.

Oil and Charcoal on unsized, unprimed canvas - Collection Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. (on extended loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington

Zone (1953-54)

Artist: Philip Guston

Zone , a painting that reflects the focused concentration of Philip Guston's mature work, suggests a warm calm, with its mist of red hatch-marks filling the painting's center. ("Look at any inspired painting," he once said, "it's like a gong sounding; it puts you in a state of reverberation.") Here, Guston hones his mark-making, and builds layers of paint out of quick, small strokes that are quite distinct from the wilder gestures of some of his colleagues. This approach led him to be characterized at one time as an "American Impressionist", and also suggests just how varied was the work embraced by the official title of the movement, Abstract Expressionism.

Oil on canvas - The Edward R. Broida Trust, Los Angeles

Thaw (1957)

Artist: Lee Krasner

Thaw is Lee Krasner's ode to a joyous spring bursting forth with exuberant brushstrokes and vibrant color after a long winter. The repetition of oval shapes partially filled with color suggests tropical foliage, ripe and fruitful, unlike any found on earth. It is an abstract nature inspired by Henri Matisse and nurtured in the studio of her teacher, the artist Hans Hofmann. Hofmann would also have inspired her freedom to attack a bare canvas with a paint-heavy brush. Her strokes have an unerring energy and athleticism that scorns revision. Few have been reinforced so as to structure the composition, but in many the tracks of the brush hairs are visibly unaltered. These are the gestures of a painter highly inspired by nature and marked by an unfettered spirit.

Oil on canvas - Available on line Wikiarts. Christie's sale 2007

Bullfight (1959)

Artist: Elaine de Kooning

Bullfight is a boisterous expression of passion and color in varied brushstrokes, which cover the canvas in a sort of chaotic symmetry. The artist has said of her style: "I'm more interested in character than style. Character comes out of the work. Style is applied or imposed on the work. Style can be a prison." Her work is known for this impulse toward freedom along with movement, attention to balance and design and deliberate choices about color, form and composition. De Kooning was extremely immersed in the movement. When she began making her first paintings, she was an editorial associate at ARTnews and one of the first to write reviews and articles on her fellow Abstract Expressionist members such as Franz Kline and Mark Rothko. She was also married to the key Abstract Expressionism figure, Willem de Kooning.

Oil on canvas - Denver Art Museum

Essex (1960)

Artist: John Chamberlain

Essex is a wall relief reminiscent of an inflated abstract painting and typifies much of Chamberlain's freestanding sculptures. The artist spontaneously crafted these pieces with car parts found in junkyards, assembling them through chance intuition. Additional colors were then applied to reinforce the palette of common auto paints and emphasize the broken surfaces that bulged out from the wall and captured light on their reflective surfaces. The sharply cut pieces of steel Chamberlain used were fitted to bring out linear rhythms much like the actions made by painters' brushes. Similar to sculptor David Smith, Chamberlain's spontaneous methods and work resembled three-dimensional versions of Abstract Expressionistic paintings, which justified his inclusion in the group.

Painted and chromium plated steel - Museum of Modern Art - New York City

Evening Rendezvous (1962)

Artist: Norman Lewis

Although Lewis often said that art was not a tool for solving society's problems, his work was often a place for him to work out the emotionally charged experiences and challenges of being a man of color and all the permutations that presented within his community at large. This piece, distinctive for its red, white and blue all-American palette, although highly abstract, conjures the imagery of hooded Klansmen gathered around a bonfire at twilight - colluding under a perversely false guise of patriotism. The background typifies Lewis' use of atmospheric washes of hue to inform mood, in this case a somber one.

Oil on canvas - Smithsonian American Art Museum

Cubi VI (1963)

Artist: David Smith

Cubi VI by David Smith is one of the series of sculptures in stainless steel that epitomize his mature career as an artist. It is an abstract composition of geometric figures - squares and rectangles, in a vertical arrangement and intended to stand out of doors like a sentinel or a totem. Although greater than "life size" it nevertheless has the anatomical proportions of a human with legs, torso and head rendered through geometry. And while it is static there is a quality of anticipated movement to be found in its broken silhouette. The figure is asymmetrical and implies that a shift in space could be anticipated. Smith was a complex artist who drew and painted with equal talent and understood the power of light falling upon these rectangular areas. So the surfaces have been abraded and drawn upon with tools and made to sparkle in sunlight, becoming a further source of sculptural animation: abstraction and expression united in an icon.

Stainless steel - The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

Beginnings of Abstract Expressionism

It is one of the many paradoxes of Abstract Expressionism that the roots of the movement lay in the figurative painting of the 1930s. Almost all the artists who would later become abstract painters in New York in the 1940s and 1950s were stamped by the experience of the Great Depression, and they came to maturity whilst painting in styles influenced by Social Realism and the Regionalist movements. By the late 1940s most had left those styles behind, but they learned much from their early work. It encouraged them in their commitment to an art based on personal experience. Time spent painting murals would later encourage them to create abstract paintings on a similarly monumental scale. The experience of working for the government-sponsored Works Progress Administration also brought many disparate figures together, and this would make it easier for them to band together again in the late 1940s and early 1950s when the new style was being promoted.

New York in the 1930s and 1940s

Artists living in New York in the 1930s were the beneficiaries of an increasingly sophisticated network of museums and galleries, which staged major exhibitions of modern art. The Museum of Modern Art mounted shows such as "Cubism and Abstract Art," "Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism," and a major retrospective of Pablo Picasso . And 1939 saw the opening of the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, later to be called the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, which boasted an important collection of Wassily Kandinsky's works.

Many European modernists began to come to New York in the 1930s and 1940s to escape political upheaval and war. Some, such as the painter and teacher Hans Hofmann , would prove directly influential. Hofmann had spent the early years of the century in Paris where he had met the likes of Picasso , Henri Matisse , and Georges Braque , who had acquired titanic reputations in artists' circles in New York. Hoffman was able to impart many of their ideas to his students through his sophisticated understanding of Cubism , and love of Matisse's Fauvism , which was underappreciated by many in New York.

All this activity meant that New York's artists were extraordinarily knowledgeable about trends in modern European art. It left many with feelings of inferiority, yet these were slowly overcome in the 1940s. Personal encounters with many displaced Europeans, such as André Breton , Salvador Dalí , Arshile Gorky , Max Ernst , Piet Mondrian , and André Masson , helped to dispel some of the mythic status these artists had acquired. As Europe suffered under totalitarian regimes in the 1930s, and later became mired in war, many Americans felt emboldened to transcend European influence, to develop a rhetoric of painting that was appropriate to their own nation, and, not least, to take the helm of advanced culture at a time when some of its oldest citadels were under threat. It was no accident that critic Clement Greenberg , in one of his first important responses to the new movement, described it as: 'American-Type' Painting.

Indeed, as writer Mary Gabriel writes in "Ninth Street Women": "It would not have taken much reflection to conclude that works of art created before 1940 were no longer appropriate to describe the postwar world. The broken planes of Cubism might have anticipated the destruction inherent in war but they were made irrelevant by its onset. The dark terrors of the Surrealists were clever ruminations on the unconscious amid the rise of fascism. But as one visitor to a Surrealist exhibition said, 'After the gas chambers ... what is there left for the poor Surrealists to shock us with?' ... poet Adrienne Rich wrote 'radical change in human sensibility required radical changes in artistic style' - that was where artists in New York founded themselves immediately after the war, looking for a way to express their altered reality."

The Formation of the Movement

By the late 1940s, many factors were in place to give birth to the new movement - however varied and disparate its artists' work. Clyfford Still has been credited for kick-starting the movement in the years immediately following World War II with his own shift from representational to large, abstract works. In 1947 Jackson Pollock developed his signature drip technique. The following year, Willem de Kooning had an influential show at the Charles Egan Gallery where he introduced his Women paintings, famously eliminating composition, light, arrangement, and relationships from his female portraits so that figuration turned into the abstract. Barnett Newman arrived at his artistic breakthrough with the picture Onement I ; and Mark Rothko began painting the "multi-form" paintings that would lead to the notable works of his mature period. In 1951,18 like-minded artists mounted a boycott of an exhibition of contemporary art at the Metropolitan Museum called "American Painting Today - 1950." Afterwards, they were cajoled into posing for a photo for Life magazine and were baptized as "The Irascibles." The piece popularized the term Abstract Expressionism, giving the movement a sense of group identity and common purpose.

Abstract Expressionism: Concepts, Styles, and Trends

Building upon surrealism.

Surrealism was an original influence on the themes and concepts of the Abstract Expressionists. Although the American painters were uneasy with the overt Freudian symbolism of the European movement, they were still inspired by its interests in the unconscious, as well as its strain of primitivism and preoccupation with mythology. Many were particularly interested in the ideas of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung , who believed that elements of a collective unconscious had been handed down through the ages by means of archetypal symbols, or primordial images, which had become recurrent motifs.

Before he was making his drip paintings, Pollock's interest in primeval themes appeared often. In his She-Wolf piece, which he described "came into existence because I had to paint it," a somber wolf is overlaid with lines and swirls. Although the artist refused to discuss its content, it was made as the world struggled with global crisis and has been compared to the myth of the city of Rome's birth in which the wolf suckled the twin founders Romulus and Remus. Another artist, Adolph Gottlieb , frequently included archetypal symbolism in his paintings. A cross, an egg, or an arrow might appear to express basic psychological ideas that were universally familiar.

Color Field Painting

The emerging Abstract Expressionist artists had an impetus to move away from the biomorphic Surrealism of Miró and Picasso, and toward an increasingly reductive style that emphasized a more personal expression. Still, Rothko, and Newman are typical of this progression as they ventured into the world of color as expressive, emotional object in its own right. Still created canvases marked by bold colors that were torn up and ruptured by other juxtaposing textures and forms, angular, uneven and vivid. Rothko experimented with abstract symbols in the early 1940s before moving towards entirely abstract fields of color. Newman similarly sought an approach that might strip away all extraneous motifs and communicate everything through one powerfully resonant symbol. Newman's 'zip' paintings presented vertical bands of color painted down the center of a canvas, which served to unify rather than divide the piece.

Although some would later argue that Color Field Painting represented a new manifestation of a long tradition of sublime landscape (connected to a long-running topic of The Sublime in Art , noted theorist of the time Clement Greenberg viewed the work of Still, Rothko, and Newman as an evolution of formalism thus defining a fresh stream within Abstract Expressionism. Formalism was not interested in the contents of the work as much as analyzing the lines, color, and forms presented - a dissection of the way paintings were made and their purely visual aspects.

Action Painting

Greenberg also championed Pollock's "drip" paintings in a formalist regard (as an exciting and vast new way to look at color splotches and spontaneous paint forms) although the work was most known for catapulting Abstract Expressionism's other main style - that of action painting. Harold Rosenberg , another important critic of the time, explained in a 1952 article for ART News entitled "The American Action Painters": "At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act - rather than a space in which to reproduce, redesign, analyze or 'express' an object, actual or imagined. What was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event."

Rosenberg presented an insightful realization of what painters like Pollock, Kline and de Kooning all had in common. For them, the painting was seen only as a physical manifestation of the actual work of art, which was the process of making the painting. The spontaneous actions of the painter, the random drips and brush strokes, all represented a struggle or dance with the subconscious to unloose its contents through pure expression.

But this creative process was not without considerations toward control either. Pollock considered his drip technique to be, at least in part, a means of harnessing his unconscious; the effects thus laid bare for all to see on the surface of the canvas. But like many others, Pollock also insisted on an element of control in his method - as he once said, "No chaos, damn it!" - and he believed that the "drips" were powerfully expressive, rather than being merely random accumulations of paint. Indeed, they were self-expressive. Many Abstract Expressionists whose embrace of chaos was balanced by an impulse toward control shared the ambivalence in Pollock's attitude. This paradox explains much of the energetic tumult one finds in the work of many so-called "action painters" including de Kooning, Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell. In part it led to the "all-over" effect, which one sees in Pollock's mature work, and in de Kooning's abstract paintings of the late 1940s, in which forms seem to be dispersed evenly across the canvas - composure in the midst of chaos.

Many Abstract Expressionists of the time straddled both Color Field and Action Painting with their work. In Helen Frankenthaler's early career, her canvases were a mix of pleasant blotches of color interspersed with loosely strategic forms. But she would go on to become one of the most famous Color Field painters of our time with her signature giant canvases stained with large washes of color, laid down in very physical fashion by large mops and squeegees.

The Second Generation

The Abstract Expressionist movement of 1950s New York would make a huge impact on the art world and bloom outward to influence a Second Generation of Abstract Expressionist artists with slightly different concerns. These artists were more diverse in terms of gender, socio-cultural environment, and geography although a key hub did emerge in San Francisco. Greenberg coined these followers of a decidedly de Kooning style, those who painted with a "tenth street touch," or loaded brush. Unlike their forebears, the second-generation artists' emphasis shifted from the interior, subjective world to the objective exterior - analyzing and questioning what gave things meaning. Greenberg staged a show in 1964 called "Post-Painterly Abstraction" to showcase these new styles, which had arisen from the influence of Abstract Expressionism and showcased this new generation of talent. Lyrical Abstraction and Hard Edge would also emerge during this time. Second Generation Abstract Expressionists included Morris Louis , Kenneth Noland , Ellsworth Kelly , Frank Stella , Joan Mitchell , and many others.

Minorities of Abstraction

During the 1940s and 50s, many female painters in New York and San Francisco were producing work in tandem with their more highly publicized male counterparts, yet they remained largely absent from the literature, textbooks and documentation of the times. Abstract Expressionism was often characterized as a robustly masculine, white man's field, cutting a bold and aggressive swath through the softer aspects of fine art. But women like Mary Abbott , Jay DeFeo , Perle Fine , Helen Frankenthaler , Sonia Gechtoff , Judith Godwin , Grace Hartigan , Elaine de Kooning , Lee Krasner , Joan Mitchell , Deborah Remington , and Ethel Schwabacher were also experimenting with material and process to free themselves from previous artistic conventions. Although very individualized in essence, the work of these female artists often presented expressions in response to recurring themes such as place, seasons, or references from literature, dance and music. Similarly, African American artists Norman Lewis , who used bright expressive palettes and calligraphic lines to express the eternal conflict between joy and plight within his racial community; and Ed Clark , who was one of the early users of shaped canvases, were important contributors to the movement who flew low under the public's radar of the time.

Later Developments - After Abstract Expressionism

By the mid 1950s the style had also run its course in other ways. The movement's greatest achievements were often built on a conflict between chaos and control. which could only be played out in so many ways. Some artists, such as Newman and Rothko, had evolved a style so reductive that there was little room for development - and to change course would have shrunk the grandeur of their bold trademarks.

Younger artists following the development of this generation were less persuaded by artists who were said to put forth one sublime expression after another, often in series, and they grew tired of their postures of heroism. Homosexual artists, such as Jasper Johns , Robert Rauschenberg , Andy Warhol , and Ellsworth Kelly , also felt little affinity with the macho styles and rhetoric of the New York School. Some, like Johns, would learn much from the Abstract Expressionists, and carry their interest in the autographic gesture in fresh directions, introducing qualities of irony, ambiguity and reticence, which the older generation could never have countenanced. Others, like Warhol, were too enthralled by the pop culture of the streets to have much in common with the lofty ambitions of hard-drinking womanizers such as Pollock and de Kooning.

By the late 1950s, Abstract Expressionism had entirely lost its place at the center of critical debate and a new generation was on the cusp of success. Yet the legacy of the movement was to be considerable. Allan Kaprow sensed this as early as 1958 when he wrote an article for ART News entitled "What is the legacy of Jackson Pollock?" His answer pointed beyond painting, and Pollock's influence was certainly felt in areas where performance had a role: he was to be important to the Japanese Gutai movement as well as the Viennese Actionists . But the influence of the movement as a whole would continue to be felt by painters maturing in subsequent decades. It was important for the likes of Dorothea Rockburne , Pat Steir , Susan Rothenberg and Jack Whitten in the 1970s. Its rhetoric - if not its direct example - would be important for many Neo-Expressionists in the 1980s such as Julian Schnabel and Jean-Michel Basquiat . And in the 1990s it again provided an example to painters such as Cecily Brown . The themes and concepts that informed Abstract Expressionism may have lost the power to compel young artists, but the movement's achievements continue to supply them with standards against which to be measured.

In 2016, the ladies of the movement finally received their due when the Denver Art Museum compiled the traveling Women of Abstraction exhibition. It was the first major organized recognition of over fifty important pieces seen together as a cohesive whole.

Useful Resources on Abstract Expressionism

• Abstract Expressionism Event Timeline Interactive timeline of major events in the development of the movement
• Art Theory and Critics Overview of Abstract Expressionist ideas and the theoricians behind those ideas
• Venues of Abstract Expressionism The galleries, museums, clubs, and schools where the movement took shape
• Abstract Expressionism (World of Art, 2 nd edition) (2015) By Debra Bricker Balken
• Abstract Expressionism: A World Elsewhere (2010) By David Anfam
• Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art By Mary Gabriel
• Abstract Expressionism: The International Context (2007) Focus on movements influence on international art scene / By Joan Marter, David Anfam
• Reading Abstract Expressionism: Context and Critique (2005) Our Pick A selection of readings including influential statements by Rothko, Motherwell, Pollock, and Newman as well as commentary by diverse critics. No reproductions of works / By Ellen G. Landau
• American Abstract Expressionism of the 1950s: An Illustrated Survey (2003) 88 artists are represented with statements in their own words and a biography. / By Marika Herskovic
• Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics (1999) History of the movement by investigation of other, largely-ignored artists - people of color, women, gays, and lesbians. / By Ann Eden Gibson
• The New York School: A Cultural Reckoning (1992) Our Pick By Dore Ashton
• The New York School (1972) Our Pick Trailer for Michael Blackwood Productions film
• Ovation TV's documentary on Jackson Pollock
• Pollock Painting
• Inside New York Art World's episode with Lee Krasner
• Jackson Pollock: Icons of Abstract Expressionism (trailer) Our Pick
• Robert Rauschenberg on Erased De Kooning
• Modern art was CIA 'weapon' Our Pick How the US spy agency used art by / Pollock and de Kooning in a cultural Cold War / By Frances Stonor Saunders / The Independent / 22 October 1995
• Rebel Painters of the 1950s By Carolyn Kinder Carr / National Portrait Gallery
• The New Abstraction By Barbara A MacAdam / Art News / November 2007
• Abstract Expressionism Timeline of Events Warhol Stars AbEx site
• Pollock Our Pick Popular biography of Jackson Pollock and his circle. / Written and directed by Ed Harris.
• Who the #$&% Is Jackson Pollock? Our Pick Low-budget movie about a missing Pollock painting.

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Modernisms 1900-1980

Course: modernisms 1900-1980   >   unit 9, the impact of abstract expressionism.

• Sari Dienes, Star Circle
• Jasper Johns, Flag
• Johns, White Flag
• Robert Rauschenberg, Erased de Kooning Drawing
• Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon
• Robert Rauschenberg, Bed
• Robert Rauschenberg, Signs
• Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz Useful Art #5: The Western Hotel, 1992
• Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting
• Ad Reinhardt
• The Painting Techniques of Ad Reinhardt
• Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea
• Helen Frankenthaler, The Bay
• Frankenthaler's The Bay
• Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor
• “Protractor, Variation I” by Frank Stella
• New York School (quiz)

Painters in Postwar New York City

Action painting, color field painting, want to join the conversation.

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The Impact of Abstract Expressionism

Jackson Pollock, One: Number 31, 1950 , 1950, oil and enamel paint on unprimed canvas, 269.5 x 530.8 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

Painters in Postwar New York City

The end of World War II was a pivotal moment in world history and by extension the history of art. Many European artists had come to America during the 1930s to escape fascist regimes, and years of warfare had left much of Europe in ruins. In this context New York City emerged as the most important cultural center in the West. In part, this was due to the presence of a diverse group of European artists like Arshile Gorky, Marcel Duchamp, Salvador Dalì, Piet Mondrian, and Max Ernst, and the influential German teachers Josef Albers and Hans Hofmann (see also Black Mountain College). American artists’ exposure to European modernist movements also resulted from the founding of the Museum of Modern Art (1929), the Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later the Guggenheim Museum, 1939), and galleries that dealt in modern art, such as Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of this Century (1941). Both Americans and European expatriates joined American Abstract Artists , a group that advanced abstract art in America through exhibitions, lectures, and publications.

These institutions and the art patrons affiliated with them actively promoted the work of New York City artists. During the 1940s and ’50s, the scene was dominated by the figures of Abstract Expressionism, a group of loosely affiliated painters participating in the first truly American modernist movement (sometimes called the New York School), championed by the influential critic Clement Greenberg. Abstract Expressionism’s influences were diverse: the murals of the Federal Art Project, in which many of the painters had participated, various European abstract movements, like De Stijl, and especially Surrealism, with its emphasis on the unconscious mind that paralleled Abstract Expressionists’ focus on the artist’s psyche and spontaneous technique. Abstract Expressionist painters rejected representational forms, seeking an art that communicated on a monumental scale the artist’s inner state in a universal visual language.

Action Painting

These painters fall into two broad groups: those who focused on a gestural application of paint, and those who used large areas of colour as the basis of their compositions. The leading figures of the first group were Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and above all Jackson Pollock. Pollock’s innovative technique of dripping paint on canvas spread on the floor of his studio prompted critic Harold Rosenberg to coin the term action painting to describe this type of practice. Action painting arose from the understanding of the painted object as the result of artistic process, which, as the immediate expression of the artist’s identity, was the true work of art. Helen Frankenthaler also employed experimental techniques by pouring thinned pigments onto untreated canvas.

Barnett Newman, Vir Heroicus Sublimis , 1950-51, oil on canvas, 242.2 x 541.7 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

Color Field Painting

The second branch of Abstract Expressionist painting is usually referred to as Color Field painting. Two central figures in this group were Mark Rothko, known for canvases composed of two or three soft, rectangular forms stacked vertically, and Barnett Newman, who, in contrast to Rothko, painted fields of colour with sharp edges interrupted by precise vertical stripes he called “zips” (see Vir Heroicus Sublimis , 1950–51). Through the overwhelming scale and intense colour of their canvases, Colour Field painters like Rothko and Newman revived the Romantic aesthetic of the sublime.

Because of the huge influence of Abstract Expressionism in postwar New York City, other artists and movements are generally understood in relation to it. Ad Reinhardt in the early 1950s and then Frank Stella later in the decade painted abstract canvases, but rejected the Abstract Expressionist emphasis on gesture and the painting as a means of communing with the artist (see Stella’s Die Fahne Hoch! , 1959). They instead reinforced the essence of the painting as a physical object through precise geometric forms and smooth application of paint, presaging Minimalism.

Andy Warhol, Campbell’s Soup Cans , 1962, synthetic polymer paint on thirty-two canvases, each 50.8 x 40.6 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, New York)

The other principal movement of postwar New York was Pop art. Although Pop had begun in England (see, for example, Richard Hamilton), postwar America provided a meaningful context for the movement’s emphasis on mass media and consumer culture. American adherents also saw Pop art as a welcome alternative to pure abstraction. The artists Jasper Johns and his close friend Robert Rauschenberg rejected Abstract Expressionism’s attachment to the universal meaning expressed in a work of art, instead creating multiple or fluid meanings through combinations of everyday objects and images. Johns depicted “things the mind already knows,” such as American flags, targets, numerals, and beer cans, and incorporated newsprint and plaster casts into his works (see Target with Four Faces , 1955). Rauschenberg also blurred the boundaries between painting and sculpture with his combines, such as Bed of 1955. These works are related to both assemblage and collage in their use of found three-dimensional objects (bedding, furniture, taxidermied animals) and layering of printed material (product packaging, newspaper, photographs) on painted surfaces.

Both Johns and Rauschenberg provided a critical departure from the pure abstraction of the dominant painters of the 1950s, setting the stage for the flourishing of Pop art in the ’60s. Andy Warhol was unquestionably the central figure of the American Pop art movement. He first worked as a highly successful advertising artist in New York before exhibiting paintings and silkscreen prints beginning in the early 1960s. Best known for his images of Campbell’s soup cans, Coke bottles, and American public figures, Warhol’s work seems to celebrate icons of consumer culture – both actual products and celebrities who were marketed and sold as such, like Marilyn Monroe – but is also often interpreted as a critique of passive, unthinking consumption. James Rosenquist, a contemporary of Warhol, also took inspiration from his work in advertising as a billboard painter. His huge canvases depicting images from print media and advertisements, such as Marilyn Monroe I (1962), are rooted in the vulgarity of contemporary life, but reminiscent of Surrealism in their juxtaposition of disparate, fragmentary imagery.

The success of abstract and Pop painters in postwar New York established the city’s international importance as an artistic center, in the ensuing decades drawing to it some of the world’s most talented and innovative artists.

Text by Kandice Rawlings, PhD (Associate Editor, Oxford Art Online)

This content was first developed for Oxford Art Online and appears courtesy of Oxford University Press.

Additional Resources:

Abstract Expressionist New York , The Museum of Modern Art, NY (2010)

“Jackson Pollock on his Process”, video, SFMOMA (2000)

Justin Wolf, “Abstract Expressionism”, theartstory.org

de Kooning: A Retrospective , The Museum of Modern Art, NY (2011)

“De Stijl”, Tate Glossary 

David Anfam, “Surrealism”, Grove Art Online , © 2009 Oxford University Press 

David Anfram, “Action Painting”, Grove Art Online, © 2009 Oxford University Press

Justin Wolf, “Clement Greenberg”, theartstory.org 

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This post is part of an ongoing series on Eye Level: "Q and Art," where American Art's Research department brings you interesting questions and answers about art and artists from our archive.

Question: I've read a lot about Abstract Expressionism in New York during the 1940s and 50s, painters such as Jackson Pollock and William De Kooning. What about the rest of the United States? Were there Abstract Expressionists in other places?

Answer: The art historian Susan Landauer tells the story of California Abstract Expressionists in her book The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism . The artists were professors or students at the California School of Fine Arts from the mid 1940s through 1960. Landauer argues that they followed a parallel path with the New York Abstract Expressionists to develop a new style of painting. In the book's preface, she describes some of the differences and similarities between the two groups:

San Francisco Abstract Expressionism differs from the New York version in certain respects. Not being a product of a frenzied metropolis, it is perhaps slower, less flashy, and more deeply rooted in nature. At the same time, it is equally expressive of the post-World War II experience, with its peculiar ambivalences and swings of mood between ecstatic expansiveness and painful introspection. Like most of the New York artists, the San Franciscans believed that strokes of paint on canvas could express their innermost feelings--even, some thought, their spiritual essence--while functioning as a kind of pictorial Esperanto. But what seems to have provided them with their greatest source of energy was a complete faith in the revolutionary character of their art.

Clyfford Still was one of the most revolutionary artists of the San Francisco School and is often described as a leader of Abstract Expressionism. Raised in Washington state and Alberta, Canada, he studied literature and philosophy at Spokane University. During World War II, Still worked at factories in the San Francisco area. He spent a year in New York before returning to San Francisco to teach at the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA, now the San Francisco Art Institute). While he was there--from 1946 to 1950--he painted large canvases with expanses of darkly colored fields with jagged edges. The paintings were unlike anything his fellow professors and students had seen, and although he did not try to persuade students to adopt his style, his work had an impact on the artists at CSFA.

Hassell Smith , a professor at CSFA, claimed that Still's 1947 exhibition at the Legion of Honor was the major motivation for his switch from figurative to abstract painting. Smith admired Still’s work, but he developed his own style that expressed humor and the energy of the Dixieland jazz that was popular at the time. The introspective and philosophical side of the San Francisco School is revealed in the paintings of Frank Lobdell . One of the many veterans to attend CSFA on the GI bill, Lobdell painted dark paintings with twisted forms that showed the anxiety of the postwar period.

Unfortunately, there is not space here to mention all of the San Francisco School artists, but you can view artworks by some of the California Abstract Expressionists in The American Art Museum's collection: Ernest Briggs , Edward Corbett , Richard Diebenkorn , Sonia Getchoff and George Stillman .

To read more about the artists mentioned above look for the following books at a bookstore or your library: Susan Landauer's The San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism , Paper Trails: San Francisco Abstract Expressionist Prints, Drawings and Watercolors and San Francisco and the Second Wave: The Blair Collection of Bay Area Abstract Expressionism . To explore the Clyfford Still's work in greater depth, visit the new Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado.

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western europe, 1600–1800, genre painting in northern europe, geometric abstraction, geometric and archaic cyprus, geometric art in ancient greece, geometric patterns in islamic art, george inness (1825–1894), george washington: man, myth, monument, georges seurat (1859–1891) and neo-impressionism, georgia o’keeffe (1887–1986), gerard david (born about 1455, died 1523), german and austrian porcelain in the eighteenth century, the ghent altarpiece, gian lorenzo bernini (1598–1680), gilbert stuart (1755–1828), giovanni battista piranesi (1720–1778), giovanni battista tiepolo (1696–1770), gladiators: types and training, glass from islamic lands, glass ornaments in late antiquity and early islam (ca. 500–1000), glass with mold-blown decoration from islamic lands, the gods and goddesses of canaan, gold in ancient egypt, gold in asante courtly arts, gold in the ancient americas, gold of the indies, the golden age of french furniture in the eighteenth century, the golden harpsichord of michele todini (1616–1690), golden treasures: the royal tombs of silla, goryeo celadon, the grand tour, the graphic art of max klinger, great plains indians musical instruments, great serpent mound, great zimbabwe (11th–15th century), the greater ottoman empire, 1600–1800, greek art in the archaic period, greek gods and religious practices, greek hydriai (water jars) and their artistic decoration, the greek key and divine attributes in modern dress, greek terracotta figurines with articulated limbs, gustave courbet (1819–1877), gustave le gray (1820–1884), hagia sophia, 532–37, the halaf period (6500–5500 b.c.), han dynasty (206 b.c.–220 a.d.), hanae mori (1926–2022), hans talhoffer’s fight book, a sixteenth-century manuscript about the art of fighting, harry burton (1879–1940): the pharaoh’s photographer, hasanlu in the iron age, haute couture, heian period (794–1185), hellenistic and roman cyprus, hellenistic jewelry, hendrick goltzius (1558–1617), henri cartier-bresson (1908–2004), henri de toulouse-lautrec (1864–1901), henri matisse (1869–1954), henry kirke brown (1814–1886), john quincy adams ward (1830–1910), and realism in american sculpture, heroes in italian mythological prints, hinduism and hindu art, hippopotami in ancient egypt, hiram powers (1805–1873), the hittites, the holy roman empire and the habsburgs, 1400–1600, hopewell (1–400 a.d.), horse armor in europe, hot-worked glass from islamic lands, the house of jeanne hallée (1870–1924), the housemistress in new kingdom egypt: hatnefer, how medieval and renaissance tapestries were made, the hudson river school, hungarian silver, icons and iconoclasm in byzantium, the idea and invention of the villa, ife (from ca. 6th century), ife pre-pavement and pavement era (800–1000 a.d.), ife terracottas (1000–1400 a.d.), igbo-ukwu (ca. 9th century), images of antiquity in limoges enamels in the french renaissance, impressionism: art and modernity, in pursuit of white: porcelain in the joseon dynasty, 1392–1910, indian knoll (3000–2000 b.c.), indian textiles: trade and production, indigenous arts of the caribbean, industrialization and conflict in america: 1840–1875, the industrialization of french photography after 1860, inland niger delta, intellectual pursuits of the hellenistic age, intentional alterations of early netherlandish painting, interior design in england, 1600–1800, interiors imagined: folding screens, garments, and clothing stands, international pictorialism, internationalism in the tang dynasty (618–907), introduction to prehistoric art, 20,000–8000 b.c., the isin-larsa and old babylonian periods (2004–1595 b.c.), islamic arms and armor, islamic art and culture: the venetian perspective, islamic art of the deccan, islamic carpets in european paintings, italian painting of the later middle ages, italian porcelain in the eighteenth century, italian renaissance frames, ivory and boxwood carvings, 1450–1800, ivory carving in the gothic era, thirteenth–fifteenth centuries, jacopo dal ponte, called bassano (ca. 1510–1592), jade in costa rica, jade in mesoamerica, jain manuscript painting, jain sculpture, james cox (ca. 1723–1800): goldsmith and entrepreneur, james mcneill whistler (1834–1903), james mcneill whistler (1834–1903) as etcher, jan gossart (ca. 1478–1532) and his circle, jan van eyck (ca. 1390–1441), the japanese blade: technology and manufacture, japanese illustrated handscrolls, japanese incense, the japanese tea ceremony, japanese weddings in the edo period (1615–1868), japanese writing boxes, jasper johns (born 1930), jean antoine houdon (1741–1828), jean honoré fragonard (1732–1806), jean-baptiste carpeaux (1827–1875), jean-baptiste greuze (1725–1805), jewish art in late antiquity and early byzantium, jews and the arts in medieval europe, jews and the decorative arts in early modern italy, jiahu (ca. 7000–5700 b.c.), joachim tielke (1641–1719), joan miró (1893–1983), johannes vermeer (1632–1675), johannes vermeer (1632–1675) and the milkmaid, john constable (1776–1837), john frederick kensett (1816–1872), john singer sargent (1856–1925), john singleton copley (1738–1815), john townsend (1733–1809), jōmon culture (ca. 10,500–ca. 300 b.c.), joseon buncheong ware: between celadon and porcelain, joseph mallord william turner (1775–1851), juan de flandes (active by 1496, died 1519), julia margaret cameron (1815–1879), the julio-claudian dynasty (27 b.c.–68 a.d.), kamakura and nanbokucho periods (1185–1392), the kano school of painting, kingdoms of madagascar: malagasy funerary arts, kingdoms of madagascar: malagasy textile arts, kingdoms of madagascar: maroserana and merina, kingdoms of the savanna: the kuba kingdom, kingdoms of the savanna: the luba and lunda empires, kings and queens of egypt, kings of brightness in japanese esoteric buddhist art, the kirtlington park room, oxfordshire, the kithara in ancient greece, kodak and the rise of amateur photography, kofun period (ca. 300–710), kongo ivories, korean buddhist sculpture (5th–9th century), korean munbangdo paintings, kushan empire (ca. second century b.c.–third century a.d.), la venta: sacred architecture, la venta: stone sculpture, the labors of herakles, lacquerware of east asia, landscape painting in chinese art, landscape painting in the netherlands, the lansdowne dining room, london, lapita pottery (ca. 1500–500 b.c.), lascaux (ca. 15,000 b.c.), late eighteenth-century american drawings, late medieval german sculpture, late medieval german sculpture: images for the cult and for private devotion, late medieval german sculpture: materials and techniques, late medieval german sculpture: polychromy and monochromy, the later ottomans and the impact of europe, le colis de trianon-versailles and paris openings, the legacy of genghis khan, the legacy of jacques louis david (1748–1825), leonardo da vinci (1452–1519), letterforms and writing in contemporary art, life of jesus of nazareth, life of the buddha, list of rulers of ancient egypt and nubia, list of rulers of ancient sudan, list of rulers of byzantium, list of rulers of china, list of rulers of europe, list of rulers of japan, list of rulers of korea, list of rulers of mesopotamia, list of rulers of south asia, list of rulers of the ancient greek world, list of rulers of the islamic world, list of rulers of the parthian empire, list of rulers of the roman empire, list of rulers of the sasanian empire, lithography in the nineteenth century, longevity in chinese art, louis comfort tiffany (1848–1933), louis-rémy robert (1810–1882), lovers in italian mythological prints, the lure of montmartre, 1880–1900, luxury arts of rome, lydenburg heads (ca. 500 a.d.), lydia and phrygia, made in india, found in egypt: red sea textile trade in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, made in italy: italian fashion from 1950 to now, the magic of signs and patterns in north african art, maiolica in the renaissance, mal’ta (ca. 20,000 b.c.), mangarevan sculpture, the manila galleon trade (1565–1815), mannerism: bronzino (1503–1572) and his contemporaries, the mantiq al-tair (language of the birds) of 1487, manuscript illumination in italy, 1400–1600, manuscript illumination in northern europe, mapungubwe (ca. 1050–1270), marcel duchamp (1887–1968), maria monaci gallenga (1880–1944), mary stevenson cassatt (1844–1926), the master of monte oliveto (active about 1305–35), the materials and techniques of american quilts and coverlets, the materials and techniques of english embroidery of the late tudor and stuart eras, mauryan empire (ca. 323–185 b.c.), medicine in classical antiquity, medicine in the middle ages, medieval aquamanilia, medieval european sculpture for buildings, medusa in ancient greek art, mendicant orders in the medieval world, the mesoamerican ballgame, mesopotamian creation myths, mesopotamian deities, mesopotamian magic in the first millennium b.c., the metropolitan museum’s excavations at nishapur, the metropolitan museum’s excavations at ctesiphon, the metropolitan museum’s excavations at qasr-i abu nasr, michiel sweerts and biblical subjects in dutch art, the middle babylonian / kassite period (ca. 1595–1155 b.c.) in mesopotamia, military music in american and european traditions, ming dynasty (1368–1644), minoan crete, mission héliographique, 1851, miyake, kawakubo, and yamamoto: japanese fashion in the twentieth century, moche decorated ceramics, moche portrait vessels, modern and contemporary art in iran, modern art in india, modern art in west and east pakistan, modern art in west asia: colonial to post-colonial, modern materials: plastics, modern storytellers: romare bearden, jacob lawrence, faith ringgold, momoyama period (1573–1615), monasticism in western medieval europe, the mon-dvaravati tradition of early north-central thailand, the mongolian tent in the ilkhanid period, monte albán, monte albán: sacred architecture, monte albán: stone sculpture, monumental architecture of the aksumite empire, the monumental stelae of aksum (3rd–4th century), mosaic glass from islamic lands, mountain and water: korean landscape painting, 1400–1800, muromachi period (1392–1573), music and art of china, music in ancient greece, music in the ancient andes, music in the renaissance, musical instruments of oceania, musical instruments of the indian subcontinent, musical terms for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, mycenaean civilization, mystery cults in the greek and roman world, nabataean kingdom and petra, the nabis and decorative painting, nadar (1820–1910), the nahal mishmar treasure, nature in chinese culture, the nature of islamic art, the neoclassical temple, neoclassicism, neolithic period in china, nepalese painting, nepalese sculpture, netsuke: from fashion fobs to coveted collectibles, new caledonia, the new documentary tradition in photography, new ireland, new vision photography, a new visual language transmitted across asia, the new york dutch room, nicolas poussin (1594–1665), nineteenth-century american drawings, nineteenth-century american folk art, nineteenth-century american jewelry, nineteenth-century american silver, nineteenth-century classical music, nineteenth-century court arts in india, nineteenth-century english silver, nineteenth-century european textile production, nineteenth-century french realism, nineteenth-century iran: art and the advent of modernity, nineteenth-century iran: continuity and revivalism, nineteenth-century silhouette and support, nok terracottas (500 b.c.–200 a.d.), northern italian renaissance painting, northern mannerism in the early sixteenth century, northern song dynasty (960–1127), northwest coast indians musical instruments, the nude in baroque and later art, the nude in the middle ages and the renaissance, the nude in western art and its beginnings in antiquity, nudity and classical themes in byzantine art, nuptial furnishings in the italian renaissance, the old assyrian period (ca. 2000–1600 b.c.), orientalism in nineteenth-century art, orientalism: visions of the east in western dress, the origins of writing, ottonian art, pablo picasso (1881–1973), pachmari hills (ca. 9000–3000 b.c.), painted funerary monuments from hellenistic alexandria, painting formats in east asian art, painting in italian choir books, 1300–1500, painting in oil in the low countries and its spread to southern europe, painting the life of christ in medieval and renaissance italy, paintings of love and marriage in the italian renaissance, paolo veronese (1528–1588), the papacy and the vatican palace, the papacy during the renaissance, papyrus in ancient egypt, papyrus-making in egypt, the parthian empire (247 b.c.–224 a.d.), pastoral charms in the french renaissance, patronage at the early valois courts (1328–1461), patronage at the later valois courts (1461–1589), patronage of jean de berry (1340–1416), paul cézanne (1839–1906), paul gauguin (1848–1903), paul klee (1879–1940), paul poiret (1879–1944), paul revere, jr. (1734–1818), paul strand (1890–1976), period of the northern and southern dynasties (386–581), peter paul rubens (1577–1640) and anthony van dyck (1599–1641): paintings, peter paul rubens (1577–1640) and anthony van dyck (1599–1641): works on paper, petrus christus (active by 1444, died 1475/76), the phoenicians (1500–300 b.c.), photographers in egypt, photography and surrealism, photography and the civil war, 1861–65, photography at the bauhaus, photography in düsseldorf, photography in europe, 1945–60, photography in postwar america, 1945-60, photography in the expanded field: painting, performance, and the neo-avant-garde, photojournalism and the picture press in germany, phrygia, gordion, and king midas in the late eighth century b.c., the piano: the pianofortes of bartolomeo cristofori (1655–1731), the piano: viennese instruments, pictorialism in america, the pictures generation, pierre bonnard (1867–1947): the late interiors, pierre didot the elder (1761–1853), pieter bruegel the elder (ca. 1525–1569), pilgrimage in medieval europe, poetic allusions in the rajput and pahari painting of india, poets in italian mythological prints, poets, lovers, and heroes in italian mythological prints, polychrome sculpture in spanish america, polychromy of roman marble sculpture, popular religion: magical uses of imagery in byzantine art, portrait painting in england, 1600–1800, portraits of african leadership, portraits of african leadership: living rulers, portraits of african leadership: memorials, portraits of african leadership: royal ancestors, portraiture in renaissance and baroque europe, the portuguese in africa, 1415–1600, post-impressionism, postmodernism: recent developments in art in india, postmodernism: recent developments in art in pakistan and bangladesh, post-revolutionary america: 1800–1840, the postwar print renaissance in america, poverty point (2000–1000 b.c.), the praenestine cistae, prague during the rule of rudolf ii (1583–1612), prague, 1347–1437, pre-angkor traditions: the mekong delta and peninsular thailand, precisionism, prehistoric cypriot art and culture, prehistoric stone sculpture from new guinea, the pre-raphaelites, presidents of the united states of america, the print in the nineteenth century, the printed image in the west: aquatint, the printed image in the west: drypoint, the printed image in the west: engraving, the printed image in the west: etching, the printed image in the west: history and techniques, the printed image in the west: mezzotint, the printed image in the west: woodcut, printmaking in mexico, 1900–1950, private devotion in medieval christianity, profane love and erotic art in the italian renaissance, the pyramid complex of senwosret iii, dahshur, the pyramid complex of senwosret iii, dahshur: private tombs to the north, the pyramid complex of senwosret iii, dahshur: queens and princesses, the pyramid complex of senwosret iii, dahshur: temples, qin dynasty (221–206 b.c.), the qing dynasty (1644–1911): courtiers, officials, and professional artists, the qing dynasty (1644–1911): loyalists and individualists, the qing dynasty (1644–1911): painting, the qing dynasty (1644–1911): the traditionalists, the rag-dung, rare coins from nishapur, recognizing the gods, the rediscovery of classical antiquity, the reformation, relics and reliquaries in medieval christianity, religion and culture in north america, 1600–1700, the religious arts under the ilkhanids, the religious relationship between byzantium and the west, rembrandt (1606–1669): paintings, rembrandt van rijn (1606–1669): prints, renaissance drawings: material and function, renaissance keyboards, renaissance organs, renaissance velvet textiles, renaissance violins, retrospective styles in greek and roman sculpture, rinpa painting style, the rise of macedon and the conquests of alexander the great, the rise of modernity in south asia, the rise of paper photography in 1850s france, the rise of paper photography in italy, 1839–55, the rock-hewn churches of lalibela, roger fenton (1819–1869), the roman banquet, roman cameo glass, roman copies of greek statues, roman egypt, the roman empire (27 b.c.–393 a.d.), roman games: playing with animals, roman glass, roman gold-band glass, roman housing, roman inscriptions, roman luxury glass, roman mold-blown glass, roman mosaic and network glass, roman painting, roman portrait sculpture: republican through constantinian, roman portrait sculpture: the stylistic cycle, the roman republic, roman sarcophagi, roman stuccowork, romanesque art, romanticism, saint petersburg, saints and other sacred byzantine figures, saints in medieval christian art, the salon and the royal academy in the nineteenth century, san ethnography, sanford robinson gifford (1823–1880), the sasanian empire (224–651 a.d.), scenes of everyday life in ancient greece, scholar-officials of china, school of paris, seasonal imagery in japanese art, the seleucid empire (323–64 b.c.), senufo arts and poro initiation in northern côte d’ivoire, senufo sculpture from west africa: an influential exhibition at the museum of primitive art, new york, 1963, seventeenth-century european watches, the severan dynasty (193–235 a.d.), sèvres porcelain in the nineteenth century, shah ‘abbas and the arts of isfahan, the shah jahan album, the shahnama of shah tahmasp, shaker furniture, shakespeare and art, 1709–1922, shakespeare portrayed, shang and zhou dynasties: the bronze age of china, shoes in the costume institute, shōguns and art, shunga dynasty (ca. second–first century b.c.), sienese painting, silk textiles from safavid iran, 1501–1722, silks from ottoman turkey, silver in ancient egypt, sixteenth-century painting in emilia-romagna, sixteenth-century painting in lombardy, sixteenth-century painting in venice and the veneto, the solomon islands, south asian art and culture, southern italian vase painting, southern song dynasty (1127–1279), the spanish guitar, spiritual power in the arts of the toba batak, stained (luster-painted) glass from islamic lands, stained glass in medieval europe, still-life painting in northern europe, 1600–1800, still-life painting in southern europe, 1600–1800, the structure of photographic metaphors, students of benjamin west (1738–1820), the symposium in ancient greece, takht-i sulaiman and tilework in the ilkhanid period, talavera de puebla, tanagra figurines, tang dynasty (618–907), the technique of bronze statuary in ancient greece, techniques of decoration on arms and armor, telling time in ancient egypt, tenochtitlan, tenochtitlan: templo mayor, teotihuacan: mural painting, teotihuacan: pyramids of the sun and the moon, textile production in europe: embroidery, 1600–1800, textile production in europe: lace, 1600–1800, textile production in europe: printed, 1600–1800, textile production in europe: silk, 1600–1800, theater and amphitheater in the roman world, theater in ancient greece, theseus, hero of athens, thomas chippendale’s gentleman and cabinet-maker’s director, thomas cole (1801–1848), thomas eakins (1844–1916): painting, thomas eakins (1844–1916): photography, 1880s–90s, thomas hart benton’s america today mural, thomas sully (1783–1872) and queen victoria, tibetan arms and armor, tibetan buddhist art, tikal: sacred architecture, tikal: stone sculpture, time of day on painted athenian vases, tiraz: inscribed textiles from the early islamic period, titian (ca. 1485/90–1576), the tomb of wah, trade and commercial activity in the byzantine and early islamic middle east, trade and the spread of islam in africa, trade between arabia and the empires of rome and asia, trade between the romans and the empires of asia, trade relations among european and african nations, trade routes between europe and asia during antiquity, traditional chinese painting in the twentieth century, the transatlantic slave trade, the transformation of landscape painting in france, the trans-saharan gold trade (7th–14th century), turkmen jewelry, turquoise in ancient egypt, tutankhamun’s funeral, tutsi basketry, twentieth-century silhouette and support, the ubaid period (5500–4000 b.c.), ubirr (ca. 40,000–present), umberto boccioni (1882–1916), unfinished works in european art, ca. 1500–1900, ur: the royal graves, ur: the ziggurat, uruk: the first city, valdivia figurines, vegetal patterns in islamic art, velázquez (1599–1660), venetian color and florentine design, venice and the islamic world, 828–1797, venice and the islamic world: commercial exchange, diplomacy, and religious difference, venice in the eighteenth century, venice’s principal muslim trading partners: the mamluks, the ottomans, and the safavids, the vibrant role of mingqi in early chinese burials, the vikings (780–1100), vincent van gogh (1853–1890), vincent van gogh (1853–1890): the drawings, violin makers: nicolò amati (1596–1684) and antonio stradivari (1644–1737), visual culture of the atlantic world, vivienne westwood (born 1941) and the postmodern legacy of punk style, wadi kubbaniya (ca. 17,000–15,000 b.c.), walker evans (1903–1975), wang hui (1632–1717), warfare in ancient greece, watercolor painting in britain, 1750–1850, ways of recording african history, weddings in the italian renaissance, west asia: ancient legends, modern idioms, west asia: between tradition and modernity, west asia: postmodernism, the diaspora, and women artists, william blake (1757–1827), william henry fox talbot (1800–1877) and the invention of photography, william merritt chase (1849–1916), winslow homer (1836–1910), wisteria dining room, paris, women artists in nineteenth-century france, women china decorators, women in classical greece, women leaders in african history, 17th–19th century, women leaders in african history: ana nzinga, queen of ndongo, women leaders in african history: dona beatriz, kongo prophet, women leaders in african history: idia, first queen mother of benin, woodblock prints in the ukiyo-e style, woodcut book illustration in renaissance italy: florence in the 1490s, woodcut book illustration in renaissance italy: the first illustrated books, woodcut book illustration in renaissance italy: venice in the 1490s, woodcut book illustration in renaissance italy: venice in the sixteenth century, wordplay in twentieth-century prints, work and leisure: eighteenth-century genre painting in korea, x-ray style in arnhem land rock art, yamato-e painting, yangban: the cultural life of the joseon literati, yayoi culture (ca. 300 b.c.–300 a.d.), the year one, years leading to the iranian revolution, 1960–79, yuan dynasty (1271–1368), zen buddhism, 0 && essaysctrl.themev == 'departments / collections' && essaysctrl.deptv == null">, departments / collections '">.

89 Expressionism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best expressionism topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 simple & easy expressionism essay titles, 🎓 good research topics about expressionism, ❓ questions about expressionism.

• Abstract Expressionism: Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko To sum everything up, both Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko are essential for the modern art development of the 20th century.
• German Expressionism in Cinema The universal style of expressionist films was the manner in which the audience connected and related with the inner experiences of the characters.
• The Politics and Abstract Expressionism In contrast to Donnel’s opinion in terms of space, he believes that this is the main weapon of modernist art where the painters were able to demonstrate the play of colors, which is the main […]
• Expressionism: “Blind Vaysha” by Theodore Ushev The animation “Blind Vaysha” by Theodore Ushev is an example of the German expressionist style that allows the audience to feel the tragedy and the pain the protagonist of the animation experiences.
• The Difference Between Impressionism and Expressionism The main points of comparison are the history of development, which include artists of the movement, and the central ideas and motivation of the new style.
• Expressionism in Germany and Austria For example, The Lion Hunt by Delacroix shows the violence and robustness in society as depicted in the art. Some of the painters in the association, such as Ludwing Kirchner, articulated other essentials of expressionism, […]
• Expressionism in Architecture: The Late 19th and the Early 20th Century As the style was widely spread, it is necessary to indicate its main features in order to be able to differentiate between this one and other styles and movements that existed in approximately the same […]
• Expressionism: Bahr and Hal Foster’s Articles He uses some of the aesthetic models of Klee incorporating the female body, thus feminism, and cleverly brings out the idea of rejecting creativity in art, similar to Bahr’s, and focuses on the lost aspects […]
• Definition of Expressionism Thus, I consider it reasonable to revise the Oxford Dictionary’s definition as follows: expressionism is a general term for a mode of literary or visual art which tends to highlight strongly the emotional condition, mood […]
• Abstract Expressionism: “Convergence” by Pollock It is known that Jackson Pollock inspired great criticism due to his lifestyle since he was treated for alcoholism and some people considered his art to be the creation of an alcoholized brain and they […]
• Critique of a Silent Film: Masters of Expressionism The man gets lured by a woman from the city to drown his wife and go with her to the city.
• Expressionism: Breakthrough in Self-Knowledge Although building off of the emotional concepts of the Impressionists and Post-Impressionists that immediately preceded them, the Expressionists were credited with the explosion of ideas that characterized the middle period of the 20th century and […]
• Expressionism: A Shift in the Art Approaches Although as a movement, Expressionism lasted for only a decade, up to 1920, it has been accredited with the explosion of all the innovative ideas of the mid-twentieth century, and the concepts introduced by the […]
• Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism Minimal art developed mainly in the USA rather than Europe and its impersonality is seen as a reaction against the emotionalism of Abstract Expressionism.
• German Expressionism and Fauvism The paintings portraying the mores and morals of pre-war Berlin are the exciting script of a soul fascinated by the temptations of the metropolis, and each stroke of the brush conveys nervous tension and emotional […]
• Abstract Expressionism and Post-War Art Movements He continued the tradition of Abstract Expressionism in its detachment from reality; however, the focus was shifted from subjectivism and emphasis on the ways of communing with the artist.
• Mark Rothko and Abstract Expressionism By 1943, he joined the artist Willem de Kooning in a manifesto to “make the spectator see the world our way not his way”.
• Ideas in Neo-Expressionism and Contemporary Art The insights of identity can be seen in the artworks of many contemporary artists. The majority of them try to reveal their philosophical views and attract the public’s attention to those issues they consider to […]
• Expressionism as an Art Form The given way to look at expressionist art both broadens the definition and narrows it down in that it stretches the concept to the idea of art being used as a tool for creating the […]
• German Expressionism and Italian Futurism–Utopian Architecture
• Expressionism: Van Gogh’s Starry Night
• Showcasing Expressionism and Naturalism in the Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams
• Art History One Abstract Expressionism
• Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and Expressionism
• William DeKooning’s Abstract Expressionism
• Explaining the Abstract Expressionism Movement
• The Development and Characteristics of Abstract Expressionism
• German Expressionism, the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
• The Dark Films Influenced by German Expressionism
• Abstract Expressionism and Frank O’Hara’s Writing
• Pricing Revolution: From Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art
• Pina Bausch: Dance, Theater, and German Expressionism
• The History and Goals of Expressionism
• German Expressionism and Its Influence on Contemporary Film Making Essa
• 1920s Berlin German Expressionism and the Architecture and Lighting in Orson Welle’s Film The Trial
• Expressionism and Modern Day Antiestablishment
• Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism In Subconscious Manifestations
• Graffiti and Abstract Expressionism
• Differences Between Abstract Art and Expressionism
• Abstract Expressionism Art Movement History
• Fauvism, Cubism and German Expressionism
• German Expressionism and Freedom Against Authority
• German Expressionism and Its Roots
• Architectural and Structural Expressionism of the Lloyds Building, Lime Street, London
• Comparing Edward Scissor Hands and Metropolis on German Expressionism
• Lettrism and Situationism: Examining and Comparing Expressionism Movement
• Abstract Expressionism Movement
• Discussing the Social, Political, and Cultural Factors, Which influenced Cubism, Abstract Expressionism, and Pop Art
• Expressionism and Its Impact On Society
• Neo-Expressionism: The Artistic Freedom to Express Emotion and Feeling
• Edward Scissor Hands and Metropolis on German Expressionism
• Comparing and Contrasting Painting Styles: Neoclassicism, Impressionism, Abstract Expressionism
• Abstract Expressionism and Its Representation of Individual Freedom and Emotion
• German Expressionism and the Horror Film
• Discussing Reasons For, and Ways In Which, Abstract Expressionism Was Promoted as a Radically New and Distinctive Style of Painting
• Theorizing the Avant-Garde: Modernism, Expressionism, and the Problem of Postmodernity
• The Romanticism and Expressionism of the Germans as Epitomized in the Rime of The Ancient Mariner and Nosferatu
• Comparing and Contrasting Impressionism, Neoclassicism, and Expressionism
• What Are the Features of German Expressionism?
• Who Started Expressionism?
• Which Expressionism Artists Do You Know?
• How Does Abstract Expressionism Differ From Realism?
• What Is the History of the Abstract Expressionism Artistic Direction?
• What Are the Characteristics of Abstract Expressionism?
• What Lines of Painting Are Characteristic of Expressionism?
• What Is Architectural Expressionism?
• What Is the Difference Between Impressionism and Abstract Art?
• How Did Fauvism Influence Expressionism?
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• Why Did Expressionism Have Such a Big Impact on Art?
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• What Is the Difference Between Expressionism and Neo-Expressionism?
• How Does Abstract Expressionism Represent Individual Freedom and Emotions?
• What Are the Goals of Expressionism?
• What War Led to the Movement of Abstract Expressionism?
• What Is the Best Definition of Expressionism?
• Who Are the Most Famous Representatives of Expressionism?
• What Is the Purpose of Expressionism in the Society?
• What Techniques Are Used in Expressionism?
• What Is Expressionism Known For?
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IvyPanda. (2024, February 28). 89 Expressionism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/expressionism-essay-topics/

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IvyPanda . "89 Expressionism Essay Topic Ideas & Examples." February 28, 2024. https://ivypanda.com/essays/topic/expressionism-essay-topics/.

Henri Bella Schaeffer and the Women of 1950s New York City

As a processing intern with the Archives of American Art, I organized donated collections into a standardized arrangement, to make them accessible to researchers. I personally think processing archivists have the best job in the field; we get to immerse ourselves in stories and shape how the materials which hold them will be understood. I get to see an artist’s process, from journaled ideas to preliminary sketches to exhibition. I get to read their most intimate self-reflections. I get to hold snapshots of their community.

Of the collections which I processed this past summer, my favorite was the papers of Henri Bella Schaeffer . Despite being a relatively obscure artist without—as of this writing—her own Wikipedia page, Schaeffer led an impressive life, both as an artist and a philanthropist. Born in 1908, she studied at the Académie André Lhote and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, and under the tutelage of muralist William A. Mackay. She would go on to become an admired postimpressionist painter, notably included in the International Women’s Salon and the Salon d'Automne.

Much of Schaeffer’s collection surrounds her dedication to the Artists Equity Association (AEA) , a national organization that, according to their constitution and by-laws , “formed to advance, foster, and promote the interests of those who work in the Fine Arts.” Schaeffer began this philanthropic commitment in 1950 as a member of the AEA New York Chapter’s Welfare Committee. She would advance steadily within the organization over the next decade, serving as a member of the National Welfare Committee from 1953 to 1959; director of the New York Chapter from 1954 to 1956; AEA director-at-large from 1956 to 1959; and AEA national secretary from 1961 to 1963.

The AEA formed its chapter-level and national welfare committees during a period of political change and American artistic redefinition; in New York City where Schaeffer worked, this change was embodied in the invention of Abstract Expressionism. Following the end of World War II and the uptick of the Cold War, the United States’ new status as a strong ally led many European Modernists to immigrate to New York City. Art historian Michael Leja argues that American artists in New York City were influenced by this imported Modernism, a broad genre that embraces experimentation, to create art that encapsulated individualistic reactions to America’s rising role as an imperialist force. The rise of this new artistic genre in combination with America’s increasing global influence lifted New York City as a new center of the art world art scene, supported by a booming postwar economy and the Works Progress Administration’s recent federal legitimization of artistic careers.

Using the example of abstract expressionism, we can gain insight into how women artists fared in 1950s New York City. In her book, Abstract Expressionism: Other Politics , Ann Eden Gibson argues that Abstract Expressionism labels is remembered as a “triumph of the outsider,” a daring venture by artists to take their political messages from the margins to the global art scene. However, because Abstract Expressionism fundamentally relies on the personhood of the artist, those with societal advantages ironically became the dominant voices in a genre defined by its supposed marginalization. As Joan Marter notes in her essay “Missing in Action: Abstract Expressionist Women,” women abstract expressionists in New York City were largely excluded from the commercial art scene, limited in their participation within key artist clubs, and their portrayals of postwar existentialism were largely dismissed. With white women experiencing this level of discrimination, it is no surprise that artists of color saw even less recognition within the budding genre of abstract expressionism.

Due to professional dismissal, some women artists in 1950s New York City were desperate for work. As a member of the New York Chapter’s Welfare Committee, Schaeffer received many letters from women artists or the wives of artists, asking for financial and professional assistance. Common stressors included debt, medical access, and housing insecurity. The women writing to Schaeffer and the New York Welfare Committee expressed their lack the references and connections needed to apply for jobs and their desperation to support their families.

Schaeffer heard the pleas of these women and with the help of the New York Chapter Welfare Committee provided support in a variety of ways. Oftentimes this took the form of loans, to cover the rent and debts of recipients. When the situation was less immediate, the Committee connected women to job opportunities that could provide immediate cash. When a Mr. Loius Ferstad was sent to a sanitorium, the Welfare Committee covered the cost and, unable to find artistic employment on such short notice, set his wife up with “some typewriting work to do at home” to support their children in his absence. The Committee’s support always came with the expectation that its recipients would work hard to better their situations and would repay the AEA in time.

The Committee also supported women artists when the strain of poverty and personal losses to war became too much to bear. When Mrs. Dasha, the wife of a deceased veteran, wrote in requesting a same-day loan to purchase coal and clothes for her son, the Committee provided loans, artistic employment, and relocation assistance, hoping that the support would create “a possible incentive to her to try and help herself.” And when sculptor Irma Rothstein lived through a suicide attempt after losing her brother in World War II, the Committee covered her hospital bill, sold some of her artwork, and kept her company, as she had no family in the country. Schaeffer and the AEA stood with these women when they had no one else to which they could turn.

Henri Bella Schaeffer would continue to support artists through her other roles with the AEA, but her work with the New York Welfare Committee allowed her compassionate nature to directly reach women creatives in need. In the words of Schaeffer, “the right human relationship is … of utmost importance.” People like Henri Bella Schaeffer, a woman and an artist and an impactful philanthropist with a small digital footprint, are the reason I am training to be an archivist: to discover their stories, to place their legacies in the hands of others.

Emma Eubank is earning an M.A. in Public History at North Carolina State University and a M.S. in Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She interned with the Collections Processing department of the Archives of American Art in 2023.

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To Do Today: Harvard Art Museums at Night

Shop local vendors and explore one of the area’s best museums at this free event.

Photo via iStock/JHVEPhoto

Shop local vendors and explore Harvard’s museums, among the area’s best, at this free event

Eden mor (com’25).

Harvard Art Museums at Night , an event featuring live music, local vendors, and interactive activities. 

Tonight from 5 to 9 pm, and going forward, the last Thursday of each month. 

Harvard Art Museums, 32 Quincy St., Cambridge, just across the river from BU.

Admission to the event is free, but guests are encouraged to register ahead of time, as space is limited. Food and drinks from local vendors can be purchased. 

Why should I go?

Whether you’re looking for a first date idea or simply want to escape the summer heat, Harvard Art Museums at Night is a perfect way to enjoy the museum’s extensive galleries—there are more than 50 to explore—in a lively setting. Oh, and there are opportunities to win prizes. 

And if you’re hoping to learn a thing or two, catch tonight’s special tour highlighting the exhibition Imagine Me and You: Dutch and Flemish Encounters with the Islamic World, 1450–1750, which explores the cultural exchange between the Islamic world and what was at the time the Hapsburg Empire, through drawings, prints, textiles, paintings and more. Another collection worth checking out is Barnett Newman’s Studio Material , which gives viewers an inside look into the legendary abstract expressionist’s artistic process. The event also gives attendees the chance to make some art and paintings of their own at the Materials Lab, open throughout the night; maybe you can impress your date with your artistic skills. 

If you’re hungry, there will be local vendors like Comfort Kitchen, a Boston staple known for its unique take on African flavors, and drinks from Lamplighter Brewing Co., a Cambridge-based brewery specializing in New England IPAs. 

To end the night, step out into the museum’s beautiful Italian courtyard and enjoy DJ C-Zone’s smooth sound.

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