Abstract Expressionism at the Met
It is easy to look at but difficult to explain, it’s rarely ever possible to understand, and it isn’t always pretty, but abstract expressionism is a valid and varied form. Like many of the works it consists of, its history isn’t the smoothest. Some loved it; some hated it. Some love it; some hate it. The Met’s view is harder to definitively discern, but it does seem to be want to be fair. Either way, abstract expressionism has found a home, or at least very comfortable rental space, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The gallery is just beyond the chamber that houses classical nude sculptures with their members removed. The shift in physical environment from those statues to abstract expressionist paintings and sculptures is a welcome one. Once inside, it becomes necessary to resist the urge to jump from painting to painting, if for no other reason than to see if there is one in the entire gallery that you can immediately comprehend. There probably isn’t, but that is not a bad thing. It is an uncommon joy to look upon a work hanging from a wall and feel lost, yet at the same time found.
Even within the rank of abstract expressionism, there are varying degrees of abstraction as well as styles of conveying that abstraction. Comparing artists like Jackson Pollack and Claes Oldenburg makes one doubtful that these two can be even be categorized under the same division of art…but they are. Pollack’s famous drip paintings are essentially as abstract as they come. They are abstract because of their composition, because the paintings resemble nothing in existence in any way. Oldenburg on the other hand, took objects from everyday life and made them abstract. His sculptures resemble many things in existence down to a tee. His art is abstract because of the way it is presented: some is morphed, some is vibrant, some seems diseased, some seems all too healthy, and nearly all are disproportionate to reality. Take his “Soft Calendar for the Month of August” for example. Oldenburg created a blow up of the actual month of August as it appears on a calendar using canvas filled with shredded foam rubber. Maybe Oldenburg meant it to represent the overloaded, overexerted, cramped, busy and monotonous nature of so many people’s lives. Or maybe he intended for the viewer to gather his own meaning. Or maybe he didn’t intend for any meaning at all. It was definitely one of the quirkier, fun pieces on display at the gallery.
Despite the perception held by some, art does not have to be comprehendible, sensible, logical, or even necessarily complex. Art is subjective, meant to be shaped by the audiences’ individual interpretations. Nowhere is this spirit more alive than in abstract expressionism.