Collage, copying, and color: the New York School was about more than just gestural abstraction.
1945 - 1980
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Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea
Frankenthaler doesn’t paint the landscape per se, but offers an intuitive response to Cape Breton in Nova Scotia.
Frank Stella, The Marriage of Reason and Squalor
Though hand painted, this image’s regularity erased any sign of individuality or emotional investment in the work.
The Painting Techniques of Ad Reinhardt
How does Reinhardt make his “black paintings” with no black at all?
Jasper Johns, White Flag
Layers of built-up wax obscure headlines and newspaper images in this painting composed of three canvases.
Ed Kienholz and Nancy Reddin Kienholz, Useful Art #5: The Western Motel
This collaboratively-created work brings the darkly psychological space of Americana into the gallery.
Ad Reinhardt, Abstract Painting
Art on the edge of perception—Ad Reinhardt works with the biology of human sight and rewards close looking.
Robert Rauschenberg, Bed
Rauschenberg includes a pillow and a quilt in this work—elements of a bed—but no one will use it for a nap.
Helen Frankenthaler, The Bay
She was a pioneer of the “soak-stain method” of diluting acrylic paint and pouring it into unprimed canvas.
Robert Rauschenberg, Canyon
Clothing, paper, a paint tube, photographs, and a stuffed bald eagle—but it’s more than an accumulation of debris.
The Impact of Abstract Expressionism
Abstract Expressionism, combined with Pop from Britain, were major influences on artists of the 1950s and 60s.