The artists we are going to focus on were working in France, Spain, the Netherlands, and England at the same time as the U.S.-based Abstract Expressionists, yet as we will learn, their work more directly revealed the impact of the war on the human psyche and body.
As we will see, the artists in discussion abandoned art forms and media connected to the Western academic tradition and turned to gestural abstraction to produce work that reflected on their experiences and emotions. While many artists turned to abstraction, they did not completely abandon the human figure in their work. For these artists, using expressive gestural brushwork and unusual substances to create new textures, allowed them to confront the subjective human experience. In our study we will further note the influence of Existentialism (and in particular the work of Jean-Paul Sartre) on these artists, as well as the evolution of Art Brut and Art Informel.
Instructions: You are to respond to the following three prompts after completing the assigned reading (as listed). Please do not conduct outside research. You must work on your responses independently and they are to be phrased in your own words. If you quote from the assigned readings, please keep it to a minimum, and include proper citations. They should be roughly a paragraph or two in length and they can be single or double-spaced.
1. Existentialism was among the dominant philosophies in postwar Europe. Select one of Alberto Giacometti’s sculptures from this week’s PowerPoint to briefly describe and analyze as representative of Existential ideas.
2. Many postwar European artists were associated with Art Brut and/or Art Informel. Select an artwork exemplary of Art Brut and an artwork exemplary of Art Informel from this week’s PowerPoint to describe and interpret. Be sure to address each artist’s approach to composing and creating their work.
3. Francis Bacon’s paintings have been recognized for their “grim, violent, and grotesquely distorted imagery [painted] in the most seductive painterly style” (Arnason and Mansfield, 435). Explain how Bacon’s approach to painting differed from that of the artists discussed in your reply to the second prompt. Include in your response a discussion of one of Bacon’s paintings from this week’s PowerPoint. You should also reference Bacon’s descriiption of his process as explained in his interview with David Sylvester (from Art in Theory).
Reading Assignments (Figuration and Abstraction in Postwar European Art)
History of Modern Art: Chapter 17: Postwar European Art, 411-439
Art in Theory: Jean-Paul Sartre, from Existentialism and Humanism 1946, 600-602
Jean Dubuffet, “Notes for the Well-Lettered” 1946, 603-605
Michel Tapié, from An Other Art 1952, 629-631
Francis Bacon, Interview with David Sylvester 1962-3, 635-639
