231216 – Abstract Expressionism – Royal Academy, London W1J > words
1946 with the World Wars over, Europe is on its knees, derelict and destitute, it fights for its own survival as it struggles to return back to normality. The mending journey would take 15-20 years, Europe then financially crippled, with a bombed out infrastructure, a severely diminished labour force and left with enormous US debt. America did well out of the wars, it found its second wind and with it grew to dominate world Industry and finance, oil and resources, media and politics and with this the world became more American. Excess was the consequence of this new found wealth, glamour shifts from Paris to 1950’s Hollywood, big dresses, 6m long cars, palace sized houses with full fridges the size of a British terrace house box room. America is a country confident in its newfound strength, it is brash, forward looking and opportunistic. Old world order is finally smashed, improvisation and experimentation is the order of the day, New York Jazz, Cigarettes, Beatniks and Abstract Expressionism. Coltrane, Kerouac and Pollock.
Spontaneous, subconscious, automatic art put New York at the centre of the 1940s and 1950’s contemporary art scene. The canvas, a space of enactment, an event captured and contained, where paint is liberated from the values of morality, politics and opinions. The studio floor replaces the easel, paint is dripped and splashed without traditional brushstrokes and all of their tonal values, the unstretched canvas is attacked from all sides. The very changes of approach and production influenced numerous painters for the following decades freeing up techniques and attitudes. Post War, when all progress that had preceded the wars led to catastrophe, new directions were unclear and could no longer be philosophically prescribed, experimentation was the only way forward.
Colours are players, sax and drums, swish, jab, scrape and slide, feel don’t think, move when it moves, beat and scale, adlib, react, follow its lead, let the conversation begin. Blue wipe shrill African forms, mud and primitive, primates on piano, beat the poet, open up within, express and distress, emotive control, follow the senses not the mind, staccato on a drip drip solo. Bohemian hedonists take their Naked Lunch, On The Road as The Dharma Burns, wave and overlay. “Angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night” Wet pavements and Greenwich neon, out there man, in the distant basement Howl like Ginsberg where the saxophone screams for those ‘Beat’ down. Build up the layers, colour on colour, a constant progression of an un-choreographed stooping dance. Flick flick and swing “tomorrow is a drag man,” “turn your eyes inside and……..dig the vacuum.”
231216. The Abstract Expressionism collection on display at the Royal Academy was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see so many influential works together in one extensive exhibition. The work on display is of the most influential of the period, it is simply incredible, the show, sadly is not. The RA has long been a dusty old backwater forever waiting for a well-needed rejuvenation. Whether this has been due to decrepit internal politics, lack of confidence, vision or simply lack of ability is uncertain. The Abstract Expressionism exhibition is the most undersold show of extraordinary art works ever to be seen. We spent as much time redesigning it room by room as we did looking at the work on display. When one recalls and compares this to recent V&A shows, such as Alexander McQueen-Savage Beauty, the Abstract Expressionism exhibition is a national embarrassment delivered with colloquial intellectual myopia. Everything was wrong, the design, the lighting, the pace, the grammar, the composition, the juxtaposition and the grouping. How can an art based institution put on an international exhibition with such banal mediocrity. Dear RA if you ever have the opportunity to put on such an exhibition again or even if you wish to do a post mortem on this exhibition as it comes to a close please email as you need help and this is not difficult work.
Images left to right. 1-3 Jackson Pollock, 4-5 Willem De Kooning, 6-7 Arshile Gorky.
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