Description: Yale University Press, 1993 softcover in very good condition.392 pages. Illustrated. SynopsisA study of abstract expressionism as seen in the works of Jackson Pollack, Willem de Kooning and other New York School artists in the wake of World War II. The author argues that the work of these artists reflects an attempt to reformulate individual identity through psychology and philosophy.,In the wake of World War II, the paintings of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, and other New York School artists participated in a culture-wide initiative to reimagine the self. At a time when widely held beliefs about human nature and the human condition were coming to seem to many commentators increasingly outdated and inadequate, Abstract Expressionism gave compelling visual form to a new subjectivity a new experience and idea of self. In this original and wide-ranging study, Michael Leja argues that the interest of these artists in tapping "primitive" and unconscious components of self aligns them with many contemporary essayists, Hollywood filmmakers, journalists, and popular philosophers who were turning, like the artists, to psychology, anthropology, and philosophy in the effort to reformulate individual identity. Taking Pollock's paintings and their reception as a case study, Leja shows that critics located in Pollock's abstract forms a web of metaphors including spatial entrapment, conflicted production, energy flow, gendered opposition, and unconsciousness that situated the paintings in mainstream cultural discourses on the individual's sense of self and identity. In this interpretative frame, the cultural and ideological character of the art is illuminated. According to Leja, Abstract Expressionism effectively enacted and represented the new, conflicted, layered subjectivity, a feature that helps to account for the support and interest it garnered from cultural and political institutions alike.
Price: 38 USD
Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts
End Time: 2025-01-26T20:10:08.000Z
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Item Specifics
All returns accepted: ReturnsNotAccepted
Narrative Type: Nonfiction
Features: Illustrated
Original Language: English
Intended Audience: Adults
Subject: Art & Photography
Book Title: Reframing Abstract Expressionism : Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s
Number of Pages: 400 Pages
Language: English
Publisher: Yale University Press
Publication Year: 1997
Item Height: 0.1 in
Topic: History / Contemporary (1945-), General, History / General
Illustrator: Yes
Genre: Art
Item Weight: 33.7 Oz
Author: Michael Leja
Item Length: 1 in
Item Width: 0.7 in
Format: Trade Paperback
