Research Catalog

Title

Reframing abstract expressionism : subjectivity and painting in the 1940s / Michael Leja.

Author

Leja, Michael, 1951-

Publication

• New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [1993]
• ©1993

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 392 pages : illustrations; 27 cm

Summary

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widely held beliefs about human nature and the human condition were coming to seem to many commentators increasingly outdated and inadequate, Abstract Expressionism gave compelling visual form to a new subjectivity - a new experience and idea of self.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.

Subjects

• Pollock, Jackson, 1912-1956
• Subjectivity in art
• United States
• Abstract expressionism > United States
• Pollock, Jackson, 1912-1956 > Criticism and interpretation
• Painting, American > 20th century
• 1900-1999
• Criticism, interpretation, etc

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 370-388) and index.

Contents

Introduction : Framing abstract expressionism -- The formation of an avant-garde in New York -- The mythmakers & the primitive : Gottlieb, Newman, Rothko & Still -- Jackson Pollock & the unconscious -- Narcissus in chaos : subjectivity, ideology, modern man & woman -- Pollock & metaphor Epilogue.

Call Number

ND212.5.A25

ISBN

• 0300044615
• 9780300044614
• 9780300070828
• 0300070829

LCCN

92032992

OCLC

26672937

Author

Leja, Michael, 1951-

Title

Reframing abstract expressionism : subjectivity and painting in the 1940s / Michael Leja.

Publisher

New Haven, CT : Yale University Press, [1993]

Copyright Date

©1993

Type of Content

text

still image

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 370-388) and index.

Connect to:

Table of contents

Chronological Term

1900-1999

Research Call Number

*R-ART ND212.5.A25 L45 1993

JQZ 12-3947