American artists are expressing through their artistic statements concerning the United States role as a land of diversity by transplanting the center of Avant-Garde from Europe to New York, by making it evident in how they created their art. As a result, every artist involved created a new tactic for how art was created. By removing any elicit political or regional to create works that challenge us to think outside of what our preconceived notions of what art should be. This new approach for how these AB-EX artists created their works are evident in Jackson Pollock’s (Fig 8.23) Lavender Mist, Willem De Kooning’s (Fig 8.0) Woman I, Mark Rothko’s No. 61 (Rust and Blue) [Brown Blue, Brown on Blue] http://www.moca.org/collection/work/no-61-rust-and-blue-brown-blue-brown-on-blue, and Barnett Newman’s (Fig 8.26) Onement …show more content…
Analyzing Fig 8.0 it is difficult not to notice the dominating figure encompassing the entire canvas. Through layers and layers of paint we find ourselves trying to construct the body of this figure, whose only recognizable feature is her face. The overlapping of colors to create different colors, the quickness of the brush strokes, the thickness of the paint, Craven describes as “the occasion of spontaneity or intense feeling” (Carven, 75). I could not agree more with Craven because when you look at De Koonig’s work, especial his women series it is hard not to notice the great sense of acting out of impulse. It is something we can all relate to, we have all let our reactions be guided by our feeling and that is hard to ignore with this piece. It is almost as if he took our ideals of femininity and the yearning that men have towards women and depicted it in this exuberant, yet hostile painting. Hostile because she is confined in this abstract canvas that De Kooning has placed her forcefully, which is part of the tautness that is powering the painting. Finally, for the first time we see classic notions of art being brought to this modern approach to art. The archetype depiction of the large seated female figure is being commercialized, like the plethora of women that appeared in advertisements in the 1950’s as Dr. Harris mentioned she is