As mentioned in MoMA’s family activity guide, David Smith once said “I do not recognize the limits where painting ends and drawing begins.” This quote encapsulates the essence of the Abstract Expressionist New York exhibition, which allowed exploration of not only the intersections between two-dimensional and three-dimensional art but of some of the artists’ creative processes.
Ms. Pachner, our tour guide, told us that the abstract expressionists were believers in Carl Jung’s theory of collective memory, and their paintings were meant to convey the archetypes which everyone of us is aware of. I did not see this so much in the art, but I did feel that their was a certain sort of visceral sentiment in the paintings of Pollock that I could relate to. While a much bigger fan of his later work than of his earlier, I still found it interesting to view his pieces along a chronological trajectory and see how he progressed artistically throughout his lifetime.
I used to not appreciate Pollock. In middle school, we had to make paintings simulating Pollock’s in which we haphazardly blew paint onto paper with straws; I felt that surely anyone who we could copy so easily was not worthy of great artist status. I now realize that what we did was not a true simulation of Pollock’s work at all. His splatter paintings carry a physical presence, and to be next to one is to be consumed in the immediacy of his lines, a beautiful chaos. The gestures and drips are not random; the entropy is deliberate, as exemplified by the way the painting below seems simultaneously expansive and self-containing, reminiscent almost of a galaxy.
In one of the rooms, there were letters and pictures of the artists talking about or working on their art. This was of great interest to me because I love to learn about things in the process of formation. My two favorite photographs in this section were the ones of David Smith and Jackson Pollack:
This fascination with process carried over to my venture downstairs into the prints and illustration gallery, which was also housing a special exhibition on abstract expressionism. I loved the sculptures and prints of Louise Nevelson, and the similarities between the two brought me back to Smith’s earlier claim about how there was no real divise line between painting and sculpture. This is shown by Seymour Lipton who’s otherwise milquetoast drawings gained a significance when I saw them next to his finished sculptural piece Imprisoned Figure (1948).
