![\"Helen](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/Frankenthaler-Europa-1957.jpg?resize=320%2C400&ssl=1\")
<\/a>Helen Frankenthaler “Europa” 1957<\/strong><\/p><\/div>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is the Tate website glossary\u2019s definition: \u201cAbstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s, often characterized by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of\u00a0spontaneity.\u201d<\/p>\n Wikipedia helpfully adds: \u201cThe movement’s name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German\u00a0Expressionists\u00a0with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as\u00a0Futurism, the\u00a0Bauhaus, and Synthetic\u00a0Cubism. Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic.\u201d<\/p>\n The movement \u2013 if it was a movement \u2013 was christened in 1946 by the critic Robert Coates, applying it for the first time to American art, though Wikipedia points out that the same term was used in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm, <\/em>in connection with German expressionism, and that Alfred Barr used it in 1929, applying it to work by Kandinsky. There\u2019s seldom been much disagreement about what is meant by \u201cabstract\u201d (though a great painter such as Howard Hodgkin still has the adjective misapplied to him), and the conundrum, such as it is, rests on the application of the noun \u201cexpressionism.\u201d We no longer have any problem appreciating that emotion can be expressed in non-representational art, but it doesn\u2019t take too much historical imagination to see why Americans brought up on a pictorial diet of Grant Wood and Norman Rockwell, or even Edward Hopper, might find it difficult at first to feel the rage or ecstasy in a Pollock or Rothko painting.<\/p>\n So many years have passed since its heyday that we are no longer much hung up on the defining properties of Abstract Expressionism or, happily, on the question of which artists qualify as Abstract Expressionists. Moreover, the passage of time means that there is even some degree of agreement about quality \u2013 so we pretty much agree which artists ought to be included in an AE show, and which of their works are their best ones.<\/p>\n Perhaps that is why the current show at the Royal Academy is such a major event. The Financial Time<\/em>\u2019s fine critic, Jackie Wullschlager, goes so far as to say that it is \u201cthe most pleasurable, provocative exhibition of American art in Britain this century.\u201d And it is almost true that, apart from a couple of Jackson Pollock works, which are impossible to move from the walls on which they permanently reside, the RA exhibition omits few of the glories of AE.<\/p>\n In the courtyard of the RA you see some attention-grabbing sculptures by David Smith, a generous clue about what\u2019s to come. The show hangs in one of the world\u2019s great exhibition spaces, the main galleries of the Royal Academy, and when you walk into the first room, with its riveting group of self-portraits surrounded by Arshile Gorky paintings (including three great ones loaned by MoMA), and then walk into the next room of vast Pollock canvases, you know you are having an unrepeatable experience. Indeed, Pollock\u2019s 20-foot \u201cMural,\u201d painted on the floor of Peggy Guggenheim\u2019s apartment, faces his last great work, \u201cBlue Poles\u201d (which twinkles with glass shards incorporated from turkey basters, I believe), that has been loaned by the National Gallery of Australia. The installation is cunning. If you stand midway between these two trophy Pollocks, at a right angle you see through the doorway to another gallery, on the wall of which hangs \u201cThe Eye is the First Circle\u201d 1960 by his widow, Lee Krasner. It is an homage to \u201cMural,\u201d but the startling colours of the Pollock are muted in the Krasner, to the point where it seems to be painted in in rich shades of brown and black \u2013 and the story is that it signals her acceptance of her alcoholic husband\u2019s untimely death in a car crash.<\/p>\n (I was excited to see the half-dozen Krasners in this show, especially her telling self-portrait 1931-33, before she knew Pollock. I am writing this in the room where she sat when visiting us, on the occasion of a show at what was then called Museum of Modern Art Oxford, in the 1970s, when its director was the young Nick Serota.)<\/p>\n Another brilliant hang is placing the assembly of Rothkos in the rotunda \u2013 they are a bit closer to each other than the collection in the dedicated room at the Tate, but the wall panels say this closer hanging was actually sanctioned by the artist. The pictures include some bright ones with violet and orange hues, so the experience of seeing them all together is excitingly different from the prayerful hush of the Tate.<\/p>\n The major spaces are given to these painters, with a sculpture by David Smith in the middle of most of the rooms, and to Clyfford Still, Willem de Kooning (a spectacular gallery), Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, and Philip Guston. Less prominent figures such as Adolph Gottlieb are not neglected, and Robert Motherwell makes quite a good showing. One glaring error, I think, is the inclusion of only a single picture by Helen Frankenthaler. \u201cEuropa\u201d 1957, in which large areas of the canvas are stained with the paint, in more or less the opposite of Pollock\u2019s technique, is such a knockout that you\u2019d have thought the curators, David Anfam and Edith Devaney, would have begged or borrowed as many Frankenthalers as they could.<\/p>\n The colour reproductions in the heavyweight catalogue are not perfect, and David Anfam\u2019s turgid but informative prose, is compensated for by Jeremy Lewison\u2019s essay, which deals with the question of the CIA financing the dissemination of American culture via Abstract Expressionism. (It was, after all, the time when the CIA was subsidising Encounter <\/em>magazine, and toying with Left-ish organisations of all kinds. I myself had a cheque in the early 60s from one of the CIA-front foundations. Of course I only learned this years later \u2013 and it was only the repayment of a small loan I had made to a cooperative bookstore. But anyone even tangentially involved with the arts in 1960s America probably had a similar experience.)<\/p>\n There can only be minor carping about this landmark show, which will be remembered in history books as the exhibition that brought to London some of the greatest works by some of the greatest painters (and one great sculptor) of the 20th<\/sup> century. In February it moves to the Guggenheim, Bilbao. I\u2019d love to see what it looks like there.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n At the RA, London until 2 January 2017<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This is the Tate website glossary\u2019s definition: \u201cAbstract expressionism is the term applied to new forms of abstract art developed by American painters such as Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning in the 1940s and 1950s, often characterized by gestural brush-strokes or mark-making, and the impression of\u00a0spontaneity.\u201d Wikipedia helpfully […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1241","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-k1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1241"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1245,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1241\/revisions\/1245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}