Freedom, Risk and Individuality Terms - Essay Example

From the 1940s American artists developed something unique which illustrated the American political, economic and social forms of expression. Americans in general also became aware of an increase in crimes, which the mass media, represented by photographers, filmmakers and journalists, revealed to them. They came to know that ideas and feelings could be better expressed through art forms and abstract expressionism. Thus, the concept of abstract expressionism evolved, which marked the turning point in American art history.

So far it relates to abstract expressionism in painting, it uses a means wherein the artists apply paint rapidly on huge canvasses and express their feelings, emotions and gestures in a nongeometric form. After World War II, American artists have remained engrossed in the development of abstract art. Significant among such artists are Robert Motherwell, Norman Lewis and Mark Rothko who have contributed greatly to the development of the technique of abstract expressionism. It is mainly characterized by eminent factors. The first factor is the large size canvas which has been used after the Second World War and the second factor is the strong and unusual deployment of brushstrokes and experimental paints which are used. Another highlight of abstract art is that even though it is complex and lacked a recognizable subject, yet the art form is of very high content. Moreover, it always encompassed the trait of being fuelled by artists’ need to communicate universally.

Abstract expressionists always make it a point to portray rich meanings and their works are a combination of both fluid washes as well as violent strokes of paint. “Rothko's fluid washes of paint, for example, stand in contrast to De Kooning's energetic, nearly violent brushstrokes. Yet both artists believed strongly in the ability of art to evoke powerful and meaningful emotions in the viewer” (Post World War II par. 3). It appears to a viewer that the painting is a chance painting or is simply an accident painting but such type of paintings is highly planned and has rich meanings, boiling beneath the surface, which the painter has visualized and intends to communicate to the world. Mark Rothko’s sienna, orange and black on dark brown and browns over dark are popular canvases. The USA’s experience in World War II demonstrates the conflict which existed between the American values and the geopolitical exigencies. President Franklin D Roosevelt has delivered the famous ‘four freedom’ address where people possess certain freedom such as the freedom to speak, worship, want and the right to remain free from fear.

Norman Rockwell, another eminent abstract expressionist painter, has immortalized the concept of four freedoms in a series of paintings in the Saturday Evening Post. “Works representing emancipated blacks from an album of photographs taken by the war artist James Taylor reveal an indeterminate, still somewhat displaced status for those recently freed by the Union Army” (Kromm & Bakewell 240). Photographs, especially made and dispersed by antislavery societies in order to celebrate the victorious escapes of slaves, by contrast, raised the performance and unusual daring of a foreign voyage. “Parsons Gallery was a premier showcase of postwar abstraction, a further example of the key cultural position women held in the course of the twentieth-century American art” (Doss 119).

The 1940s also saw a remarkable shift in American art from a representational American scene to a style of geometric abstraction. During this time, there also existed a demand for a mixture of both abstract as well as surrealist paintings other than individual abstract and surrealist paintings. The new style of abstract expressionism was also called action painting. Abstract expressionists developed a new artistic style that reflected the feelings that existed in American society, after World War II.

Through the art of abstract expressionism, the artists developed the concepts of freedom, risk and individuality which existed in American society during that time. The war and its aftermath have forced several consequences upon a person’s freedom, risk and individuality due to the political, economic and social turmoil and developments which occurred during and after the war. The American artists and critics wanted to illustrate the exact image of freedom, risk and individuality in the American culture, which had developed in the chaos of war and the period that succeeded. To attain this goal, they found the media of their art forms, especially abstract expressionism, which allowed the people to visualize the events and developments in society. Read More