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125-823: The Hammer opened November 28, 1990, with an exhibition of work by the Ukrainian Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich which originated at the National Gallery of Art in Washington and subsequently travelled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The museum has since presented important single-artist and thematic exhibitions of historical and contemporary art . It has developed an international reputation for reintroducing artists and movements that have often been overlooked in

250-601: A surrealist , he was also one of the first painters of the New York School who used the technique of staining. Gorky created broad fields of vivid, open, unbroken color that he used in many of his paintings as grounds. In Gorky's most effective and accomplished paintings between the years 1941–1948, he consistently used intense stained fields of color, often letting the paint run and drip, under and around his familiar lexicon of organic and biomorphic shapes and delicate lines. Another abstract expressionist whose works in

375-516: A $ 30 million gift from the couple-the largest individual gift in the museum's history. Despite the institutional hurdles that earned it the nickname "America's vainest museum" at its inception, the Hammer is now widely acknowledged as "a hot spot for contemporary art and ideas and a venue for serious exploration of overlooked historical subjects." Under current leadership, the Hammer's budget has grown from $ 5 million to roughly $ 20 million annually, with

500-721: A 300-seat theater left unfinished at Armand Hammer's death. Its 2006 opening coincided with the centennial of Wilder's birth. The venue currently houses the UCLA Film and Television Archive 's well-known cinematheque as well as the Hammer's 300 public programs a year. Popular series include a weekly meditation program, the Libros Schmibros book club, and the Hammer Conversations which place major cultural, political, and intellectual leaders in dialog with one another. Past Hammer Conversations participants include

625-458: A canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of André Masson , Max Ernst , and David Alfaro Siqueiros . The newer research tends to put the exile-surrealist Wolfgang Paalen in the position of the artist and theoretician who fostered the theory of the viewer-dependent possibility space through his paintings and his magazine DYN . Paalen considered ideas of quantum mechanics , as well as idiosyncratic interpretations of

750-559: A catalogue and a $ 100,000 cash prize and was decided by public vote after a jury of experts narrowed the 60 participants to five finalists. In 2014 the Hammer announced it was offering three awards in conjunction with Made in L.A. 2014 : The Mohn Award ($ 100,000), the Career Achievement Award ($ 25,000)—both of which are selected by a professional jury—and the Public Recognition Award ($ 25,000), which

875-586: A co-founder of Hammer Galleries in New York City. The focus of the collection is primarily 19th century and early-20th century French impressionist and post-impressionist paintings, though the collection itself spans the 16th through the 20th century. Selections from the collection are on permanent display in the Hammer Museum's third floor galleries. Highlights of the collection include: Juno (ca. 1665-1668) by Rembrandt van Rijn , The Education of

1000-574: A collection of contemporary photography initiated by UCLA photographer Robert Heinecken (1931–2006). In 1988 the Grunwald Center received a bequest of over 850 landscape drawings and prints from the collection of Los Angeles–based architect Rudolf L. Baumfeld. The Baumfeld Collection includes important examples of European landscapes from the 16th to 20th-centuries and includes pure landscapes, as well as views of architectural ruins and urban scenes. The Eunice and Hal David Collection, bequeathed to

1125-1089: A cross-section of Los Angeles. The Hammer Museum manages five distinct collections: The Hammer Contemporary Collection; the collection of the UCLA Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts; the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden; the Armand Hammer Collection, and the Armand Hammer Daumier and Contemporaries Collection. The Hammer Contemporary Collection, inaugurated in 1999, is the museum's collection of modern and contemporary art . The collection includes works on paper, primarily drawings and photographs, as well as paintings, sculpture, and media arts. The Contemporary Collection houses works from artists, including many active in Southern California from 1960 to

1250-534: A different way from gestural abstract expressionism. Although abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York City and California, especially in the New York School , and the San Francisco Bay area . Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of large canvases, an "all-over" approach, in which

1375-598: A full-time staff of over 100. In 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic , the museum was temporary closed and laid off its 150 part-time student employees. In 1994, Henry Hopkins, then director of the Wight gallery and professor in the Department of Art at UCLA, became director of the museum. He served in that position until his retirement in 1998. In 1999 Ann Philbin , previously director of The Drawing Center in New York,

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1500-547: A late member of the Uptown Group , wrote catalogue forewords and reviews, and by the late 1940s became an exhibiting artist at Betty Parsons Gallery . His first solo show was in 1948. Soon after his first exhibition, Barnett Newman remarked in one of the Artists' Sessions at Studio 35: "We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image." Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought every step of

1625-449: A list of "the men in the new movement". Paalen is mentioned twice; other artists mentioned are Gottlieb, Rothko, Pollock, Hofmann, Baziotes, Gorky and others. Robert Motherwell is mentioned with a question mark. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey , especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not large in scale, anticipate

1750-531: A non-binding agreement to transfer his paintings to LACMA after disagreements regarding how his collection would be displayed. Shortly thereafter, on January 21, 1988, Hammer announced plans to build his own museum on the site of a Westwood parking garage adjacent to the Occidental headquarters. Community leaders who hailed the plan as a positive turning point in the neighborhood's development were soon overshadowed by complaints from Occidental shareholders who sued

1875-564: A philosophical and a physical connection to the way the color field painters like Newman, Rothko and Still construct their unbroken and in Still's case broken surfaces. In several paintings that Pollock painted after his classic drip painting period of 1947–1950, he used the technique of staining fluid oil paint and house paint into raw canvas. During 1951 he produced a series of semi-figurative black stain paintings, and in 1952 he produced stain paintings using color. In his November 1952 exhibition at

2000-474: A reaction against the subjectivism of abstract expressionism, other forms of Geometric abstraction began to appear in artist studios and in radical avant-garde circles. Greenberg became the voice of Post-painterly abstraction; by curating an influential exhibition of new painting that toured important art museums throughout the United States in 1964. Color field painting , Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction emerged as radical new directions. Since

2125-459: A significant milestone in the Hammer's commitment to collecting the works of Southern California artists. In 2012, the Hammer showcased selections from the Susan and Larry Marx Collection. The exhibition was made possible by a substantial gift from longtime museum supporters Susan and Larry Marx and includes more than 150 paintings, sculptures, and works on paper by over 100 international artists from

2250-406: A work of art was as important as the work of art itself. Like Picasso 's innovative reinventions of painting and sculpture near the turn of the century via Cubism and constructed sculpture, with influences as disparate as Navajo sand paintings , surrealism, Jungian analysis, and Mexican mural art, Pollock redefined what it was to produce art. His move away from easel painting and conventionality

2375-609: Is awarded by popular vote among exhibition visitors. All three awards are again funded by Jarl and Pamela Mohn and the Mohn Family Foundation. Past recipients are: The museum was founded by Armand Hammer , the late CEO of the Occidental Petroleum Corporation , as a venue to exhibit his extensive art collection, at the time valued at $ 250 million. A Los Angeles County Museum of Art board member for nearly 20 years, Hammer withdrew from

2500-458: Is closely associated with Action Painting because of his style, technique, and his painterly touch and his physical application of paint, art critics have likened Pollock to both Action painting and color field painting. Another critical view advanced by Greenberg connects Pollock's allover canvasses to the large-scale Water Lilies of Claude Monet done during the 1920s. Art critics such as Michael Fried , Greenberg and others have observed that

2625-473: Is dedicated to diversity and inclusion. Of all of the solo exhibitions on view in Los Angeles between January 2008 and December 2012, the Hammer is the only institution to devote 50% of its exhibition programming to female artists. The Hammer also hosts roughly fifteen Hammer Projects each year, offering international and local artists a laboratory-like surrounding to create new and innovative work. In 2010

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2750-515: Is difficult to explain or interpret because it is a supposed unconscious manifestation of the act of pure creation. In practice, the term abstract expressionism is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even applied to work which is not especially abstract nor expressionist. Pollock's energetic action paintings , with their "busy" feel, are different both technically and aesthetically, to De Kooning's violent and grotesque Women series. Woman V

2875-591: Is in the collection of MoMA , used greatly reduced references to nature, and they painted with a highly articulated and psychological use of color. In general, these artists eliminated recognizable imagery, in the case of Rothko and Gottlieb sometimes using symbols and signs as a replacement of imagery. Certain artists quoted references to past or present art, but in general color field painting presents abstraction as an end in itself. In pursuing this direction of modern art , artists wanted to present each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image. In distinction to

3000-470: Is one of a series of six paintings made by de Kooning between 1950 and 1953 that depict a three-quarter-length female figure. He began the first of these paintings, Woman I , in June 1950, repeatedly changing and painting out the image until January or February 1952, when the painting was abandoned unfinished. The art historian Meyer Schapiro saw the painting in de Kooning's studio soon afterwards and encouraged

3125-582: Is one of the originators of the Color Field movement that emerged in the late 1950s. Frankenthaler also studied with Hans Hofmann . Hofmann's paintings are a symphony of color as seen in The Gate, 1959–1960. He was renowned not only as an artist but also as a teacher of art, both in his native Germany and later in the US. Hofmann, who came to the United States from Germany in the early 1930s, brought with him

3250-614: The "all-over" look of Pollock's drip paintings. The movement's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism , the Bauhaus , and Synthetic Cubism . Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic. In practice,

3375-702: The Billy Wilder Theater and the museum's café. Michael Maltzan Architecture also designed the John V. Tunney Bridge, which opened in February 2015. The pedestrian bridge, named in honor of John V. Tunney , longtime Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Hammer Museum, connects the upper level galleries over the Hammer Courtyard. Hammer died less than a month after his namesake museum opened to

3500-938: The Charles Egan Gallery , the Sidney Janis Gallery , the Betty Parsons Gallery , the Kootz Gallery , the Tibor de Nagy Gallery , the Stable Gallery , the Leo Castelli Gallery as well as others; and several downtown galleries known at the time as the Tenth Street galleries exhibited many emerging younger artists working in the abstract expressionist vein. Action painting was a style widespread from

3625-785: The Codex Hammer . Most museums have collection guidelines for deaccessing art, which require the revenue from sales to be used for future acquisitions. The Hammer Museum instead sold the 72-page scientific notebook to fund the museum's exhibitions and programs. Suprematist Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.226 via cp1108 cp1108, Varnish XID 213414098 Upstream caches: cp1108 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Thu, 28 Nov 2024 07:54:30 GMT Abstract Expressionism Abstract expressionism in

3750-527: The Ninth Street Show , a famous exhibition curated by Leo Castelli on East Ninth Street in New York City in 1951. Besides the painters and sculptors of the period the New York School of abstract expressionism also generated a number of supportive poets, including Frank O'Hara and photographers such as Aaron Siskind and Fred McDarrah , (whose book The Artist's World in Pictures documented

3875-558: The Sidney Janis Gallery in New York City Pollock showed Number 12, 1952 , a large, masterful stain painting that resembles a brightly colored stained landscape (with an overlay of broadly dripped dark paint); the painting was acquired from the exhibition by Nelson Rockefeller for his personal collection. While Arshile Gorky is considered to be one of the founding fathers of abstract expressionism and

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4000-419: The 1930s and 1940s. In 1953 Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland were both profoundly influenced by Helen Frankenthaler 's stain paintings after visiting her studio in New York City. Returning to Washington, DC., they began to produce the major works that created the color field movement in the late 1950s. In 1972 then Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Henry Geldzahler said: Clement Greenberg included

4125-490: The 1940s call to mind the stain paintings of the 1960s and the 1970s is James Brooks . Brooks regularly used stain as a technique in his paintings from the late 1940s. Brooks began diluting his oil paint in order to have fluid colors with which to pour and drip and stain into the mostly raw canvas that he used. These works often combined calligraphy and abstract shapes. During the final three decades of his career, Sam Francis ' style of large-scale bright abstract expressionism

4250-579: The 1940s until the early 1960s, and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the terms action painting and abstract expressionism interchangeably). A comparison is often drawn between the American action painting and the French tachisme . The term was coined by the American critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 and signaled a major shift in the aesthetic perspective of New York School painters and critics. According to Rosenberg

4375-595: The Board of Overseers include artists Barbara Kruger and Lari Pittman . The museum does not disclose its annual board membership dues. In 1994, the Regents of the University of California entered into a 99-year operating agreement with the Armand Hammer Foundation and assumed management of the Hammer Museum, with the foundation retaining some control, including a "reversionary clause," granting

4500-675: The CIA's International Organizations Division (IOD) and ex-executive secretary of the Museum of Modern Art said in an interview, "I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War." Against this revisionist tradition, an essay by Michael Kimmelman , chief art critic of The New York Times , called Revisiting the Revisionists: The Modern, Its Critics and

4625-492: The Cold War , asserts that much of that information concerning what was happening on the American art scene during the 1940s and 50s, as well as the revisionists' interpretation of it, is false or decontextualized. Other books on the subject include Art in the Cold War , by Christine Lindey, which also describes the art of the Soviet Union at the same time, and Pollock and After , edited by Francis Frascina, which reprinted

4750-482: The Daumier and Contemporaries Collection include Daumier's Le passé - Le present - L'avenir (1834), Un Avocat Plaidant, (ca. 1845) Nadar élevant la Photographie á la hauteur de l'Art (1862), and Don Quixote et Sancho Panza (1866-1868). The Billy Wilder Theater opened at the Hammer Museum in late 2006, after a $ 5 million gift from Audrey L. Wilder, the widow of Billy Wilder, enabled the museum to resume building

4875-484: The Graphic Arts is one of the largest collections of works on paper in the country. Housed at the Hammer Museum, the center was established in 1956 after a gift from Fred Grunwald and today houses over 40,000 prints, drawings, photographs, and artists' books. The collection includes works dating from the Renaissance to the present, including European old master prints and drawings, Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and

5000-480: The Grunwald Center by lyricist Hal David and his wife Eunice, is a collection of 19th and 20th-century drawings by European and American artists. Selections from the collection were exhibited at the Hammer in 2003. The 2014 exhibition showcased works from the Elisabeth Dean Collection of 19th and 20th-century works on paper. The collection of approximately 900 prints and illustrated books is among

5125-634: The Hammer announced its inaugural biennial devoted exclusively to Los Angeles artists. Though the museum has routinely featured California artists as part of its ongoing exhibition program, the Made in L.A. series has emerged as an important and high-profile platform to showcase the diversity and energy of Los Angeles as an emerging art capitol. Organized by Hammer senior curator Anne Ellegood, Hammer curator Ali Subotnick, LAXART director and chief curator Lauri Firstenberg, LAXART associate director and senior curator Cesar Garcia, and LAXART curator-at-large Malik Gaines,

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5250-548: The Hammer collection's ownership and established new guidelines for its display that allowed the museum more space for exhibitions and a growing contemporary collection. As part of the agreement, the foundation received 92 paintings — including Chaïm Soutine ’s The Valet (1929) — together valued at $ 55 million, while the museum retained more than 100 paintings by Rembrandt, Vincent van Gogh, John Singer Sargent and othersm, valued at $ 250 million, and 7,500 works by Honoré Daumier and his contemporaries, valued at $ 8 million. In 2017,

5375-499: The Hammer opened its renovated third-floor galleries; in 2018, it debuted a newly designed courtyard performance space along with a gallery for new media art. The Annenberg Terrace for education, installations and programming, featuring ping pong tables and couches, opened in 2019. In 2022, a works-on-paper gallery and a study room for the museum’s Grunwald Center Collection opened, along with the museum’s renovated store. The Lynda and Stewart Resnick Cultural Center opened in 2023, thanks to

5500-509: The Hammer's own box office but might also include people around the world who log on to the museum's Web site to view podcasts of public programs, or visit travelling exhibitions which the Hammer organized. In 1994, the Hammer Museum made headlines by selling Leonardo da Vinci's Codex Leicester to Microsoft founder Bill Gates for $ 30.8 million. The Codex Leicester was one of Dr. Hammer's proudest acquisitions, purchased in 1980 for $ 5.12 million, and one which he unsuccessfully tried to rename

5625-588: The Hammer. In 2001, Hammer Foundation president Michael Armand Hammer threatened to trigger a contract clause establishing the museum with University of California regents, giving it the right to reclaim the collection and some endowment funds, if strict donation rules were breached. Led by board chairman John V. Tunney and John Walsh , a settlement between the UC Regents and the Hammer Foundation in 2007 formally ended long-simmering disputes over

5750-601: The Kimmelman article. Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923–2002), a member of the Montreal-based surrealist-inspired group Les Automatistes , helped introduce a related style of abstract impressionism to the Parisian art world from 1949. Michel Tapié 's groundbreaking book, Un Art Autre (1952), was also enormously influential in this regard. Tapié was also a curator and exhibition organizer who promoted

5875-1012: The Narrative of a Negress in the Flames of Desire - A Reconstruction (1995) by Kara Walker , Untitled (2007) by Mark Bradford , Migration (2008) by Doug Aitken , Untitled #5 (2010) by Lari Pittman , Mirage (2011) by Katie Grinnan, Ruby I (2012) by Mary Weatherford , Mimus Act I (2012) by Mary Kelly . Notable recent acquisitions to the Hammer Contemporary Collection include Suzanne Lacy 's Three Weeks in May (1977), as well as major works by Lisa Anne Auerbach , Fiona Connor , Bruce Conner , Jeremy Deller , Jessica Jackson Hutchins , Friedrich Kunath , Tala Madani , Allan McCollum , Robert Overby, Martha Rosler , Sterling Ruby , Allen Ruppersberg , Barbara T. Smith , William Leavitt , and Eric Wesley . The UCLA Grunwald Center for

6000-462: The New York avant-garde was still relatively unknown by the late 1940s, most of the artists who have become household names today had their well-established patron critics: Clement Greenberg advocated Jackson Pollock and the color field painters like Clyfford Still , Mark Rothko , Barnett Newman , Adolph Gottlieb and Hans Hofmann ; Harold Rosenberg seemed to prefer the action painters such as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline , as well as

6125-472: The New York School during the 1950s), and filmmakers—notably Robert Frank —as well. Although the abstract expressionist school spread quickly throughout the United States, the epicenters of this style were New York City and the San Francisco Bay area of California . At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act. What was to go on

6250-527: The Regents of the University of California entered into a 99-year operating agreement with the Armand Hammer Foundation to assume management of the museum, which afforded the fledgling institution a measure of stability. At that point the exhibition programs of the Wight Art Gallery, UCLA's existing museum, and the Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts, the university's print collection, were moved to

6375-546: The U.S. and Europe, including Tachisme and Neo-expressionism , among others. The term " abstract expressionism " is believed to have first been used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm in reference to German Expressionism. Alfred Barr used this term in 1929 to describe works by Wassily Kandinsky . Technically, an important predecessor is Surrealism , with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic , or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock 's dripping paint onto

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6500-520: The US formed a bridge between abstract expressionism and Pop art. Minimalism was exemplified by artists such as Donald Judd , Robert Mangold and Agnes Martin . However, many painters, such as Jules Olitski , Joan Mitchell and Antoni Tàpies continued to work in the abstract expressionist style for many years, extending and expanding its visual and philosophical implications, as many abstract artists continue to do today, in styles described as Lyrical Abstraction , Neo-expressionist and others. In

6625-466: The United States emerged as a distinct art movement in the immediate aftermath of World War II and gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s, a shift from the American social realism of the 1930s influenced by the Great Depression and Mexican muralists . The term was first applied to American art in 1946 by the art critic Robert Coates . Key figures in the New York School , which was

6750-455: The Virgin (1748-1752) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard , El Pelele (ca. 1791) by Francisco Goya , Salome Dancing before Herod (1876) by Gustave Moreau , Dr. Pozzi at Home (1881) by John Singer Sargent , Bonjour Monsieur Gauguin (1889) by Paul Gauguin , and Hospital at Saint-Remy (1889) by Vincent van Gogh . The Honoré Daumier and Contemporaries Collection at the Hammer Museum is one of

6875-780: The World of Arts and Letters , (published in the UK as Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War ) details how the CIA financed and organized the promotion of American abstract expressionists as part of cultural imperialism via the Congress for Cultural Freedom from 1950 to 1967. Notably Robert Motherwell's series Elegy to the Spanish Republic addressed some of those political issues. Tom Braden , founding chief of

7000-811: The archive were exhibited in the 2010 exhibition Outside the Box: Edition Jacob Samuel, 1988-2010. A research and education resource, the Grunwald Center study room is available by appointment to faculty, students, and members of the public. Highlights from the Grunwald's collection include: Melencolia I (1514) by Albrecht Dürer , Christ Preaching (1652) by Rembrandt van Rijn , Maple trees at Mama, Tekona Shrine and linked Bridge (1857) by Utagawa Hiroshige , Les Grands Baigneurs (1896) by Paul Cézanne , Le Repas Frugal (1904) by Pablo Picasso , and Entropia (review) (2004), by Julie Mehretu . The Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA

7125-462: The art historical canon. Notable examples include a 2003 retrospective of Lee Bontecou , co-organized with the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago ; Heat Waves in a Swamp: The Paintings of Charles Burchfield , curated by the artist Robert Gober ; and Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles, 1960–1980 , the Hammer Museum's contribution to the Getty's 2011 Pacific Standard Time initiative. The Hammer

7250-469: The art was political, the message was largely for the insiders. While the movement is closely associated with painting, collagist Anne Ryan and certain sculptors in particular were also integral to abstract expressionism. David Smith , and his wife Dorothy Dehner , Herbert Ferber , Isamu Noguchi , Ibram Lassaw , Theodore Roszak , Phillip Pavia , Mary Callery , Richard Stankiewicz, Louise Bourgeois , and Louise Nevelson in particular were some of

7375-424: The artist to persist. De Kooning's response was to begin three other paintings on the same theme; Woman II , Woman III and Woman IV . During the summer of 1952, spent at East Hampton , de Kooning further explored the theme through drawings and pastels. He may have finished work on Woman I by the end of June, or possibly as late as November 1952, and probably the other three women pictures were concluded at much

7500-478: The building that houses the museum and Occidental's former headquarters. In addition, the Hammer Museum's annual Gala in the Garden serves as a fundraiser for the museum. The 2019 edition raised $ 2.7 million. Recent museum honorees include Robert Gober , Tony Kushner , Barbara Kruger , Cindy Sherman , Judy Chicago , Jordan Peele and Charles Gaines and Chase Strangio . At the Hammer Museum, 2010 attendance

7625-537: The canvas as an "arena in which to act" was pivotal in defining the approach of action painters . The cultural reign of Abstract Expressionism in the United States had diminished by the early 1960s, while the subsequent rejection of the Abstract Expressionist emphasis on individualism led to the development of such movements as Pop art and Minimalism . Throughout the second half of the 20th century, influence of AbEx can be seen in diverse movements in

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7750-405: The canvas was "an arena in which to act". While abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock , Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning had long been outspoken in their view of a painting as an arena within which to come to terms with the act of creation, earlier critics sympathetic to their cause, like Clement Greenberg , focused on their works' "objectness". To Greenberg, it was the physicality of

7875-419: The canvas was not a picture but an event. In the 1940s there were not only few galleries ( The Art of This Century , Pierre Matisse Gallery, Julien Levy Gallery and a few others) but also few critics who were willing to follow the work of the New York Vanguard. There were also a few artists with a literary background, among them Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman , who functioned as critics as well. While

8000-530: The capitals of Europe in upheaval, with an urgency to economically and physically rebuild and to politically regroup. In Paris, formerly the center of European culture and capital of the art world, the climate for art was a disaster, and New York replaced Paris as the new center of the art world. Post-war Europe saw the continuation of Surrealism , Cubism , Dada , and the works of Matisse. Also in Europe, Art brut , and Lyrical Abstraction or Tachisme (the European equivalent to abstract expressionism) took hold of

8125-436: The center of this movement, included such artists as Arshile Gorky , Jackson Pollock , Franz Kline , Mark Rothko , Norman Lewis , Willem de Kooning , Adolph Gottlieb , Clyfford Still , Robert Motherwell , Theodoros Stamos and Lee Krasner among others. The movement was not limited to painting but included influential collagists and sculptors, such as David Smith , Louise Nevelson , and others. Abstract Expressionism

8250-474: The company over the museum's escalating construction costs, which were capped by a federal judge at $ 60 million. Designed by Edward Larrabee Barnes , the New York–based architect responsible for the Dallas Museum of Art and the Walker Art Center, the building housing the museum was conceived as a Renaissance palazzo with galleries centered around a tranquil, interior courtyard and a relatively austere exterior profile. In 2006, architect Michael Maltzan designed

8375-447: The definitions and possibilities that artists had available for the creation of new works of art. The other abstract expressionists followed Pollock's breakthrough with new breakthroughs of their own. In a sense the innovations of Pollock, de Kooning , Franz Kline , Rothko , Philip Guston , Hans Hofmann , Clyfford Still , Barnett Newman , Ad Reinhardt , Richard Pousette-Dart , Robert Motherwell , Peter Voulkos , and others opened

8500-444: The early 20th century such as Wassily Kandinsky . Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists' works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. With artists such as Paul Klee , Kandinsky, Emma Kunz , and later on Rothko, Newman, and Agnes Martin , abstract art clearly implied expression of ideas concerning

8625-586: The emotional energy and gestural surface marks of abstract expressionists such as Pollock and de Kooning, the Color Field painters initially appeared to be cool and austere, effacing the individual mark in favor of large, flat areas of color, which these artists considered to be the essential nature of visual abstraction, along with the actual shape of the canvas, which later in the 1960s Frank Stella in particular achieved in unusual ways with combinations of curved and straight edges. However, Color Field painting has proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive albeit in

8750-442: The entire space of the museum to feature work by more than 30 different artists and collectives. The 2014 exhibition was organized by Hammer chief curator Connie Butler and independent curator Michael Ned Holte. The most recent Made in L.A. exhibition, Acts of Living , was organized by curators Diana Nawi and Pablo José Ramírez and Luce Curatorial Fellow Ashton Cooper, features 39 artists, collectives, and organizations representing

8875-408: The epitome of aesthetic value. He supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds as simply the best painting of its day and the culmination of an art tradition going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Monet , in which painting became ever-'purer' and more concentrated in what was 'essential' to it, the making of marks on a flat surface. Pollock's work has always polarised critics. Rosenberg spoke of

9000-502: The figure to articulate their highly personal and powerful evocations. James Brooks' paintings were particularly poetic and highly prescient in relationship to Lyrical Abstraction that became prominent in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Clyfford Still , Barnett Newman , Adolph Gottlieb and the serenely shimmering blocks of color in Mark Rothko 's work (which is not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied

9125-536: The first stain pictures, one of the first large field pictures in which the stain technique was used, perhaps the first one. Louis and Noland saw the picture unrolled on the floor of her studio and went back to Washington, DC., and worked together for a while, working at the implications of this kind of painting. In abstract painting during the 1950s and 1960s, several new directions, like the Hard-edge painting exemplified by John McLaughlin , emerged. Meanwhile, as

9250-503: The first twenty years of June Wayne 's influential Tamarind Lithography Workshop, offering a rare overview of contemporary print-making in Los Angeles. Jointly acquired by the Grunwald and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art , the Grunwald Center maintains a complete archive of prints by Los Angeles publisher Edition Jacob Samuel which documents the activity of master intaglio print-maker Jacob Samuel. Highlights from

9375-529: The floodgates to the diversity and scope of all the art that followed them. The radical Anti-Formalist movements of the 1960s and 1970s including Fluxus , Neo-Dada , Conceptual art , and the feminist art movement can be traced to the innovations of abstract expressionism. Rereadings into abstract art, done by art historians such as Linda Nochlin , Griselda Pollock and Catherine de Zegher critically shows, however, that pioneer women artists who have produced major innovations in modern art had been ignored by

9500-452: The foundation rights to reclaim the art collection and some of the endowment funds. The museum had long desired to eliminate these clauses. Operating money came from a bond portfolio, UCLA's existing art budgets, private donations, and revenue from the museum. In 2009, the museum operates on an annual operating budget of $ 14 million, 10% to 12% of which comes from the university. By the fiscal year 2011, its budget of $ 16 million surpassed that of

9625-750: The inaugural Made in L.A. in 2012 featured work by 60 Los Angeles artists in spaces throughout the city including the Hammer Museum itself, LAXART, and the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in Barnsdall Art Park . In conjunction with the exhibition, the Hammer also sponsored a satellite exhibition, the Venice Beach Biennial on the Venice Boardwalk, between July 13 and 15th of that year. The second iteration of Made in L.A. in 2014 took over

9750-519: The legacy of Modernism . As a young artist in pre-First World War Paris, Hofmann worked with Robert Delaunay , and he knew firsthand the innovative work of both Picasso and Matisse. Matisse's work had an enormous influence on him, and on his understanding of the expressive language of color and the potentiality of abstraction. Hofmann was one of the first theorists of color field painting, and his theories were influential to artists and to critics, particularly to Clement Greenberg, as well as to others during

9875-457: The mid-1970s it has been argued that the style attracted the attention, in the early 1950s, of the CIA , who saw it as representative of the US as a haven of free thought and free markets, as well as a challenge to both the socialist realist styles prevalent in communist nations and the dominance of the European art markets. The book by Frances Stonor Saunders , The Cultural Cold War—The CIA and

10000-436: The most important collections of Daumier works outside France. Housing over 7,500 works of art by the French satirist Honoré Daumier (1808-1879) and other contemporary caricaturists , it is the largest of its kind outside of Paris. Daumier was an extremely prolific artist whose work spans multiple media, and as such the collection includes paintings, drawings, lithographs, and a series of bronze portrait busts. Highlights from

10125-432: The most significant gifts received by the Grunwald Center in recent years. The Grunwald Center is also home to several important collections of Los Angeles–based contemporary artists. The Grunwald Center's collection features over 1,000 works by Sister Corita Kent , an influential pop printmaker and social justice activist, including rare preparatory studies and sketchbooks. Additionally, the Grunwald maintains an archive of

10250-447: The much larger Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles . On January 19, 2007, the Hammer Museum and the Armand Hammer Foundation agreed to dissolve their relationship, dividing the remaining 195 objects which founded the museum; the foundation retaining 92 paintings valued at $ 55 million, while the museum retaining 103 objects, valued at $ 250 million. By 2020, the museum will use its bond portfolio, valued at about $ 55 million, to purchase

10375-442: The newest generation. Serge Poliakoff , Nicolas de Staël , Georges Mathieu , Vieira da Silva , Jean Dubuffet , Yves Klein , Pierre Soulages and Jean Messagier , among others are considered important figures in post-war European painting. In the United States, a new generation of American artists began to emerge and to dominate the world stage, and they were called Abstract Expressionists . The 1940s in New York City heralded

10500-447: The official accounts of its history, but finally began to achieve long overdue recognition in the wake of the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Abstract expressionism emerged as a major art movement in New York City during the 1950s and thereafter several leading art galleries began to include the abstract expressionists in exhibitions and as regulars in their rosters. Some of those prominent 'uptown' galleries included:

10625-694: The onslaught of the Nazis for safe haven in the United States. Many of those who didn't flee perished. Among the artists and collectors who arrived in New York during the war (some with help from Varian Fry ) were Hans Namuth , Yves Tanguy , Kay Sage , Max Ernst , Jimmy Ernst , Peggy Guggenheim , Leo Castelli , Marcel Duchamp , André Masson , Roberto Matta , André Breton , Marc Chagall , Jacques Lipchitz , Fernand Léger , and Piet Mondrian . A few artists, notably Picasso , Matisse , and Pierre Bonnard remained in France and survived. The post-war period left

10750-535: The other movements of the sixties and seventies and it influenced all those later movements that evolved. Movements which were direct responses to, and rebellions against abstract expressionism began with Hard-edge painting ( Frank Stella , Robert Indiana and others) and Pop artists , notably Andy Warhol , Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein who achieved prominence in the US, accompanied by Richard Hamilton in Britain. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in

10875-517: The overall feeling in Pollock's most famous works – his drip paintings – read as vast fields of built-up linear elements. They note that these works often read as vast complexes of similarly-valued paint skeins and all-over fields of color and drawing, and are related to the mural-sized Monets which are similarly constructed of close-valued brushed and scumbled marks that also read as fields of color and drawing. Pollock's use of all-over composition lend

11000-656: The paintings of Gottlieb, and Pollock in that decade as well. Color Field painting initially referred to a particular type of abstract expressionism, especially the work of Rothko, Still, Newman, Motherwell, Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt and several series of paintings by Joan Miró . Greenberg perceived Color Field painting as related to but different from Action painting. The Color Field painters sought to rid their art of superfluous rhetoric. Artists like Motherwell, Still, Rothko, Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann , Helen Frankenthaler , Sam Francis , Mark Tobey , and especially Ad Reinhardt and Barnett Newman, whose masterpiece Vir heroicus sublimis

11125-419: The paintings' clotted and oil-caked surfaces that was the key to understanding them as documents of the artists' existential struggle. Rosenberg's critique shifted the emphasis from the object to the struggle itself, with the finished painting being only the physical manifestation, a kind of residue, of the actual work of art, which was in the act or process of the painting's creation. This spontaneous activity

11250-474: The past, the Hammer traditionally focused on university-level education programs because of its affiliation with UCLA. In conjunction with the inaugural Made in L.A. exhibition in 2012, the Hammer offered the first iteration of the Mohn Award. The Mohn Award is funded by Los Angeles philanthropists and art collectors Jarl and Pamela Mohn and the Mohn Family Foundation. The award originally consisted of

11375-418: The post-World War II period. The collection includes examples of Abstract Expressionism on canvas and paper by the American artists Jackson Pollock , Willem de Kooning , and Philip Guston as well as works by contemporary artists including Mark Bradford , Rachel Whiteread , Mary Heilmann , and Mark Grotjahn among others. Highlights from the contemporary collection include: The Battle of Atlanta: Being

11500-440: The post-war era who voiced support for abstract expressionism. During the early-to-mid-sixties younger art critics Michael Fried , Rosalind Krauss , and Robert Hughes added considerable insights into the critical dialectic that continues to grow around abstract expressionism. During the period leading up to and during World War II, modernist artists, writers, and poets, as well as important collectors and dealers, fled Europe and

11625-461: The presence of Piet Mondrian , Fernand Léger , Max Ernst, and the André Breton group, Pierre Matisse's gallery , and Peggy Guggenheim 's gallery The Art of This Century , as well as other factors. Hans Hofmann in particular as teacher, mentor, and artist was both important and influential to the development and success of abstract expressionism in the United States. Among Hofmann's protégés

11750-517: The present. Hammer Contemporary Collection works are often acquired in tandem with exhibitions presented at the museum, including the Hammer Projects series focusing on the work of emerging artists. The 2009 exhibition Second Nature: The Valentine-Adelson Collection at the Hammer exhibited selections from Dean Valentine and Amy Adelson's gift to the Hammer Contemporary Collection. The gift of fifty sculptures by 29 Los Angeles artists represents

11875-493: The public in November 1990, leaving the fledgling institution mired in litigation over its financing and prompting new legal battles regarding the disposition of Hammer's estate. While the museum's operating budget was provided by a $ 36 million annuity purchased by Occidental Petroleum , questions remained regarding the future of the museum's collections and the role that the Hammer family would play in its administration. In 1994,

12000-452: The same time. The Woman series are decidedly figurative paintings . Another important artist is Franz Kline . As with Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists, Kline was labelled an " action painter " because of his seemingly spontaneous and intense style, focusing less, or not at all, on figures or imagery, but on the actual brushstrokes and use of canvas; as demonstrated by his painting Number 2 (1954). Automatic writing

12125-425: The sculptors considered as being important members of the movement. In addition, the artists David Hare , John Chamberlain , James Rosati , Mark di Suvero , and sculptors Richard Lippold , Raoul Hague, George Rickey , Reuben Nakian , and even Tony Smith , Seymour Lipton , Joseph Cornell , and several others were integral parts of the abstract expressionist movement. Many of the sculptors listed participated in

12250-478: The seminal paintings of Arshile Gorky ; Thomas B. Hess, the managing editor of ARTnews , championed Willem de Kooning . The new critics elevated their protégés by casting other artists as "followers" or ignoring those who did not serve their promotional goal. In 1958, Mark Tobey became the first American painter since Whistler (1895) to win top prize at the Venice Biennale . Barnett Newman ,

12375-400: The social protests of these painters. Abstract expressionism arose during the war and began to be showcased during the early forties at galleries in New York such as The Art of This Century Gallery . The post-war McCarthy era was a time of artistic censorship in the United States, but if the subject matter were totally abstract then it would be seen as apolitical, and therefore safe. Or if

12500-456: The spiritual, the unconscious, and the mind. Why this style gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s is a matter of debate. American social realism had been the mainstream in the 1930s. It had been influenced not only by the Great Depression , but also by the Mexican muralists such as David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera . The political climate after World War II did not long tolerate

12625-538: The term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor expressionist. California abstract expressionist Jay Meuser , who typically painted in the non-objective style, wrote about his painting Mare Nostrum , "It is far better to capture the glorious spirit of the sea than to paint all of its tiny ripples." Pollock's energetic " action paintings ", with their "busy" feel, are different, both technically and aesthetically, from

12750-482: The totemic vision and the spatial structure of native-Indian painting from British Columbia and prepared the ground for the new spatial vision of the young American abstracts. His long essay Totem Art (1943) had considerable influence on such artists as Martha Graham , Isamu Noguchi , Pollock , Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman . Around 1944 Barnett Newman tried to explain America's newest art movement and included

12875-539: The transformation of painting into an existential drama in Pollock's work, in which "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event". "The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint'. The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value—political, aesthetic, moral." One of the most vocal critics of abstract expressionism at the time was The New York Times art critic John Canaday . Meyer Schapiro and Leo Steinberg along with Greenberg and Rosenberg were important art historians of

13000-575: The triumph of American abstract expressionism, a modernist movement that combined lessons learned from Matisse, Picasso, Surrealism, Miró , Cubism , Fauvism , and early Modernism via eminent educators in the United States, including Hans Hofmann from Germany and John D. Graham from Ukraine. Graham's influence on American art during the early 1940s was particularly visible in the work of Gorky, de Kooning, Pollock, and Richard Pousette-Dart among others. Gorky's contributions to American and world art are difficult to overestimate. His work as lyrical abstraction

13125-507: The violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning 's figurative paintings and the rectangles of color in Rothko's Color Field paintings (which are not what would usually be called expressionist, and which Rothko denied were abstract). Yet all four artists are classified as abstract expressionists. Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of

13250-423: The way to reinforce his newly established image as an artist and to promote his work. An example is his letter on April 9, 1955, "Letter to Sidney Janis : — it is true that Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world. My struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it." Strangely, the person thought to have had most to do with the promotion of this style

13375-664: The whole canvas is treated with equal importance (as opposed to the center being of more interest than the edges). The canvas as the arena became a credo of Action painting, while the integrity of the picture plane became a credo of the Color field painters. Younger artists began exhibiting their abstract expressionist related paintings during the 1950s as well including Alfred Leslie , Sam Francis , Joan Mitchell , Helen Frankenthaler , Cy Twombly , Milton Resnick , Michael Goldberg , Norman Bluhm , Grace Hartigan , Friedel Dzubas , and Robert Goodnough among others. Although Pollock

13500-465: The work of both Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland in a show that he did at the Kootz Gallery in the early 1950s. Clem was the first to see their potential. He invited them up to New York in 1953, I think it was, to Helen's studio to see a painting that she had just done called Mountains and Sea, a very, very beautiful painting, which was in a sense, out of Pollock and out of Gorky. It also was one of

13625-463: The works of Pollock and Hans Hofmann in Europe. By the 1960s, the movement's initial effect had been assimilated, yet its methods and proponents remained highly influential in art, affecting profoundly the work of many artists who followed. Abstract expressionism preceded Tachisme , Color Field painting , Lyrical Abstraction , Fluxus , Pop Art , Minimalism , Postminimalism , Neo-expressionism , and

13750-473: The writers Joan Didion , Jonathan Lethem , and George Saunders , the filmmakers Atom Egoyan and Miranda July , journalist Naomi Klein , comedians Jeff Garlin and Patton Oswalt , playwright and screenwriter David Mamet , magician Ricky Jay , artists Betye Saar and Sam Durant , actors Leonard Nimoy and Zachary Quinto , and many others. Since 2010, the Hammer has partnered with the radio station KCRW to host an annual outdoor summer concert series. In

13875-528: The years after World War II, a group of New York artists started one of the first true schools of artists in America, bringing about a new era in American artwork: abstract expressionism. This led to the American art boom that brought about styles such as Pop Art . This also helped to make New York into a cultural and artistic hub. Abstract Expressionists value the organism over the static whole, becoming over being, expression over perfection, vitality over finish, fluctuation over repose, feeling over formulation,

14000-414: Was Clement Greenberg , who became an enormously influential voice for American painting, and among his students was Lee Krasner , who introduced her teacher, Hofmann, to her husband, Jackson Pollock. During the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all Contemporary art that followed him. To some extent, Pollock realized that the journey toward making

14125-543: Was a "new language. He "lit the way for two generations of American artists". The painterly spontaneity of mature works such as The Liver is the Cock's Comb , The Betrothal II , and One Year the Milkweed immediately prefigured Abstract expressionism, and leaders in the New York School have acknowledged Gorky's considerable influence. The early work of Hyman Bloom was also influential. American artists also benefited from

14250-482: Was a New York Trotskyist: Clement Greenberg. As long-time art critic for the Partisan Review and The Nation , he became an early and literate proponent of abstract expressionism. The well-heeled artist Robert Motherwell joined Greenberg in promoting a style that fit the political climate and the intellectual rebelliousness of the era. Greenberg proclaimed abstract expressionism and Pollock in particular as

14375-482: Was a liberating signal to the artists of his era and to all that came after. Artists realized that Jackson Pollock's process—the placing of unstretched raw canvas on the floor where it could be attacked from all four sides using artist materials and industrial materials; linear skeins of paint dripped and thrown; drawing, staining, brushing; imagery and non-imagery—essentially took art-making beyond any prior boundary. Abstract expressionism in general expanded and developed

14500-471: Was abstract), are classified as abstract expressionists, albeit from what Clement Greenberg termed the Color field direction of abstract expressionism. Both Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell can be comfortably described as practitioners of Action painting and Color field painting. In the 1940s Richard Pousette-Dart 's tightly constructed imagery often depended upon themes of mythology and mysticism; as did

14625-405: Was an estimated 175,000, up from 150,000 in 2009. As of 2013, annual attendance for permanent collection, special exhibitions and programs stands at about 200,000. The museum does not provide exact figures as it does not have a computerized ticketing system. According to the museum's director Ann Philbin, the museum has "defined our primary audience as artists". Visitor numbers are also not limited to

14750-750: Was an important vehicle for action painters such as Kline (in his black and white paintings), Pollock, Mark Tobey and Cy Twombly , who used gesture, surface, and line to create calligraphic, linear symbols and skeins that resemble language, and resonate as powerful manifestations from the Collective unconscious . Robert Motherwell in his Elegy to the Spanish Republic series painted powerful black and white paintings using gesture, surface and symbol evoking powerful emotional charges. Meanwhile, other action painters, notably de Kooning, Gorky, Norman Bluhm , Joan Mitchell , and James Brooks , used imagery via either abstract landscape or as expressionistic visions of

14875-424: Was closely associated with Color field painting. His paintings straddled both camps within the abstract expressionist rubric, Action painting and Color Field painting. Having seen Pollock's 1951 paintings of thinned black oil paint stained into raw canvas, Frankenthaler began to produce stain paintings in varied oil colors on raw canvas in 1952. Her most famous painting from that period is Mountains and Sea . She

15000-589: Was inaugurated in 1967 and dedicated to the eponymous chancellor of the university. Designed by famed landscape architect Ralph Cornell, the garden houses over 70 works of modern and contemporary sculpture in a five-acre, park-like setting. Group tours of the garden can be scheduled through the Hammer's online request form. The 72 object collection comprises works by Deborah Butterfield, Alexander Calder , Henri Matisse , Joan Miró , Henry Moore , Isamu Noguchi , Auguste Rodin , and David Smith . A fully illustrated catalogue, including scholarly entries for each artist,

15125-753: Was named director and still serves as director today. The Hammer Museum was founded by Dr. Armand Hammer. Michael Armand Hammer is Chairman Emeritus, and Armie Hammer and Viktor Armand Hammer are Honorary Directors. Michael Rubel serves as President, Nelson C. Rising serves as Vice President, and Steven A. Olsen serves as Treasurer. Under Chair Marcy Carsey , the Hammer's Board of Directors also includes Heather R. Axe, Renée Becnel, Gene Block , Lloyd E. Cotsen, Eric Esrailian , Erika J. Glazer, Manuela Herzer, Larry Marx, Anthony Pritzker , Lee Ramer, Kevin L. Ratner, Chip Rosenbloom, Steven P. Song, John V. Tunney, Kevin Wall , John Walsh, and Christopher A. Waterman. Members of

15250-470: Was notably influenced by the spontaneous and subconscious creation methods of Surrealist artists like André Masson and Max Ernst . Artists associated with the movement combined the emotional intensity of German Expressionism with the radical visual vocabularies of European avant-garde schools like Futurism , the Bauhaus , and Synthetic Cubism . Abstract Expressionism was seen as rebellious and idiosyncratic, encompassing various artistic styles, and

15375-417: Was published by in 2007 by the Hammer Museum. The Armand Hammer Collection is a small selection of European and American paintings, drawings, and prints that formed the original impetus for the foundation of the Hammer Museum. Armand Hammer , the founder and namesake of the museum, assembled and refined the collection through decades of involvement in the art market, both as a collector in his own right and as

15500-446: Was the "action" of the painter, through arm and wrist movement, painterly gestures, brushstrokes, thrown paint, splashed, stained, scumbled and dripped. The painter would sometimes let the paint drip onto the canvas, while rhythmically dancing, or even standing in the canvas, sometimes letting the paint fall according to the subconscious mind, thus letting the unconscious part of the psyche assert and express itself. All this, however,

15625-509: Was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the Western art world , a role formerly filled by Paris . Contemporary art critics played a significant role in its development. Critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg promoted the work of artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, in particular Jackson Pollock, through their writings. Rosenberg's concept of

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