“Grand Street Brides” - Grace Hartigan

Grace Hartigan - Grand Street Brides - 1954 - Oil on canvas - 72 9/16 × 102 3/8 in. (184.3 × 260 cm) - Whitney Museum of American Art , New York (Click Photo for Larger Image)American New York School painter Grace Hartigan (1922-2008) began her career as an Abstract Expressionist. “Grand Street Brides” is one of Hartigan's best-known pieces—and illustrates her  decision to abandon total abstraction in favor of adding recognizable elements into her compositions. Her experiments in this vein, as well as her investigation of the old masters, both set her apart from, and irritated, other Abstract Expressionists.

Depicted here are mannequins from a bridal shop window in Hartigan’s Lower East Side neighborhood. “At this time in Europe, aristocratic women were seen as commodities to exchange among powerful families in order to forge financial or political unions between them.” Hartigan’s brides emphasize that reality. She also appreciated how shop windows frame the scene and "provide a shallow space, and define the back plane." Complexity is achieved through the layering of shapes and rendered objects.

Morris Louis: Veils

Morris Louis - Point of Tranquility - 1959-60 - Magna on canvas - 251 x 361 cm - Private Collection (Click on Photo for Larger Size)Morris Louis (1912-1962) was one of the leading figures of Color Field painting. In his short yet prolific career, Louis continually experimented with method and medium, manipulating large canvases in creative ways to control the flow and stain of his acrylic paints

“Point of Tranquility” is an example of Louis' “Floral Veils”, the last series he completed before embarking on his “Unfurled” series. Louis created the “Florals” by turning the canvas as he poured the paint, as opposed to working from a single vantage point. He layered the acrylic in a pattern that suggests a flower, the bleeding pigment creating a muddled, washy surface at the center of the canvas. The "veils" are apparent in the overlap of pigment, where washes both obscure and reveal layers of thinned color.

Helen Frankenthaler: Innovation in the Woodcut

Helen Frankenthaler - Savage Breeze - 1974 - Seven-color woodcut on Nepalese laminiated light brown hand-made paper - sheet: 80 x 68.6 cm (31 1/2 x 27 in.) National Gallery of Art - Washington, D.C. (click photo for larger image)Depicting an open space above a mountain-like divide, Savage Breeze was Frankenthaler's first foray into the medium of woodcut. Her concern in this work with achieving the same vibrant color and amorphous forms as found in her paintings led to a major technical innovation for this art form.

The artist cut a thin sheet of plywood into separately inked shapes and then, in collaboration with ULAE (Universal Limited Art Editions), the Long Island studio that printed the work, devised a special method for eliminating the white lines between them when printing.

The newly designed technique—hailed by one writer as "a departure so profound that virtually all subsequent woodcuts incorporated the thinking it embodied”—had a major impact on subsequent printmaking. (Excerpted from The ArtStory)

Savage Breeze is far removed from the graphic appearance of the traditional woodblock print, giving the appearance of painted, rather than carved, wood.

Adolph Gottlieb: Defending the Art of the Avant-Garde

Adolph Gottlieb - Man Looking at Woman - 1949 - 42 x 54" (106.6 x 137.1 cm) - Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) New York (click photo for larger image)Growing up during the Depression and maturing throughout the interwar period and the rise of Hitler, American painter Adolph Gottlieb (1903-1974) staunchly defended the art of the avant-garde -- Abstract Expressionism in particular -- for its ability to express authentic feeling in the face of the trauma of World War II. The themes of Gottlieb's paintings over the course of more than three decades still help us come to terms with both the difficulties -- such as evil, war, violence, and ignorance -- that we as humans encounter, as well as moments of the sublime aspiration and realization.

“His contact with European Surrealists exiled in New York during World War II led him to experiment with archetypal abstractions of animals, eyes, and spirals (as in the Pictograph series (1941–51)”, one of which is featured here.

The words he spoke still ring true today: "Different times require different images. Today when our aspirations have been reduced to a desperate attempt to escape from evil, and times are out of joint…our images are the expression of the neurosis which is our reality. To my mind certain so-called abstraction is not abstraction at all. On the contrary, it is the realism of our time.”

Lee Krasner’s Collages

Lee Krasner - Milkweed - 1955 - Oil, paper, and canvas collage on canvas - 82 3/8 x 57 3/4 inches (209.2 x 146.7 cm) - Collection of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery - Buffalo, NY (click photo for larger image)Abstract Expressionist Lee Krasner’s work and style evolved quite dramatically over time. During the late 1930s, when she studied the work of Picasso, Matisse and other modernists, she discovered collage. However, it wasn’t until 1951 that she began to experiment with collage techniques herself. 

Milkweed belongs to a series of canvas collages Krasner created, based on ideas from the black-and-white paper collages she had made in 1951, although the later works are more layered. Milkweed combines several techniques developed by the New York School, including Action Painting and Color Field, and unconventional materials such as scraps of recycled canvas.

Lee Krasner was extremely self-critical. She reviewed and altered her own work regularly, and was not beyond destroying paintings she felt didn’t satisfy her standards. This process of slashing and cutting her own canvases was the seed for a series of canvas collages she produced.