Art Supplies from Leslie Lohman

Expressionism Painting

Abstract Expressionism – a Movement

Abstract Expressionism was a movement that originated in post World War II America, it was the first American art movement that became globally influential and it replaced Paris with New York as the centre of the art world. Abstract Expressionism does not describe one particular style but rather an attitude rooted in a need to express individuality and improvise spontaneously. The movement’s name is derived from the influences of the emotional intensities and self denial of the German Expressionists and the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism, Bauhaus and Synthetic Cubism. Many modernist artists had fled Paris during World War II, many of whom settled in New York. The modernist movement in New York was influenced by Picasso, Matisse, Miro, Surrealism and Cubism. Jackson Pollack, one of the leading lights in the movement in New York was to re-define the way that art was created. Pollack placed large canvases on the floor, so it could be approached from all sides – smashing prior restrictions on the artistic process – he took the easel and stuck it up art’s ass. Abstract Expressionism was on it’s way, Pollack had made it alright and damn well encouraged everybody to think out of the box and explore new ways to approach and make art. It must be stressed that the movement was not constituted of artists of the same style, far from it, in fact some of the artists in the movement did not produce works that were either abstract or expressionist. Indeed, some art critics labelled the movement Action Painting or New York School. Broadly speaking, there were two distinct groups in the movement – those who worked with simple, unified blocks of colour, like Rothko, Newman and Still and those who made use of Surrealist techniques of automatic art, like Pollack, De Kooning and Hofmann. All were influenced by Existentialist thinking, which emphasised the importance of the act of creating and not the finished object.

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MFA or MA programs for a figurative painter?

Where is a good place (canada/usa) for a figurative painter (think Hopper and Freud) to get an MFA or MA? I am tired of finding grad schools stuck in color field painting or neo expressionism or places specializing in instalation works

I’d have you get an MFA, rather than an MA, if you can. You’ll be able to do more with an MFA, such as teach at a university, since it’s considered a final degree.

Have you checked the programs at Yale, Art Institute of Chicago, UCLA, Virginia Commonwealth, Cranbrook, Indiana U, RISD, Maryland Institute, San Francisco Art Institute, U Texas, and Temple yet? Those are the top painting programs in the US, and I’d hope that at least some of them have a strong focus on figurative painting. Since figurative work is coming back into “fashion”, so to speak, I’d be surprised if at least one of them didn’t have strong things to offer in this field.

You may also want to look at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. When I was there, they had quite a lot of figurative work going on. You may also want to check out the New York Academy, Graduate School of Figurative Art. That may be another school that’s a good fit.

For other schools that might work, I suggest that you do a couple of things. You can talk to a professor you know, who specialises in figurative painting, and ask for recommendations of programs. You can also check the web pages for grad schools, to see who teaches their figurative painting classes. See where those people went to school, and check those programs.

Painting: Materials & Supports : Expressionist Painting Materials