Abstract Expressionism
The beauty behind abstract art is that every individual forms his own meaning for the painting. There is no right or wrong; a person looks at the painting or object and develops a theme for it from the emotions that it produces for him. Abstract expressionism surfaced in the late 1940s and would be the dominant Western art form of the 1950s. From all of the paintings that were displayed at the MET, the three that most captivated me were Morris Louis’s untitled work, Franz Kline’s untitled work, and Class Oldenburg’s Soft Calendar for the Month of August.
Morris Louis’s work caught my attention because it was huge. The painting was one of the biggest ones on display, but it was also one of the emptiest. The work had nothing painted on it except for a couple of diagonal lines, varying in color, at the bottom left and bottom right corners. The rest of the painting was left for the viewer to complete. As I stood in front of the painting an image of a house formed in the center of the painting. The outline of the house resembled the outline of my house in the Dominican Republic. The image was grey, against the kaki background. This painting did not produce any feelings for me, rather it absorb all of my feelings and left me with nothing but an outline of my house and a state of tranquility.
Franz Kline’s work was simple, a couple of black lines on a white background. Yet, there was so much more to it. One could just stare at it for days trying to understand what Kline wanted to depict. Personally, I saw darkness, addiction and depression in the painting. It seemed as if there were arms reaching out towards a corridor that led to a mass of darkness. The arms could have belonged to people who were addicts and the dark mass represents a drug. Perhaps, the arms belonged to depressed, suicidal, individuals who reached for the darkness as a form or relief or a means towards death. Ultimately, only Kline will know what he was trying to illustrate through his photo, but maybe he does not know either and can only say that he drew what he felt.
Class Oldenburg’s Soft Calendar for the Month of August was unique in that it was not a painting, but an object. It was difficult to understand what the object was illustrating until I noticed the title of the work and the label “Aug” above the numbers. Afterwards, I was able to group the numbers and see that they were the dates for the month of August in 1962. The whole object is fluffy and makes one want to lay on it as if it were a pillow or bed. Also, the fluffiness makes the object three dimensional. I felt as if Oldenburg was trying to capture time, because it is impossible to stop time. Thus, Oldenburg and anybody will always know how the dates fell for the month of August in 1962 no matter how much time passes by.
In all, the exhibit was a unique experience, because I had never seen so many pieces of abstract art. The variety of art works revealed the different ways that abstract expressionism could be portrayed. People may enjoy abstract art more than other forms of art because one develops his own meaning for the work, but this may also cause one to dislike abstract art. There is no right or wrong when it comes to abstract art, because no one truly knows the meaning the artist was trying to portray.