The Historical Context of Abstract Expressionism The historical context of Abstract Expressionism can perhaps best be mapped out according to the theories of Pierre Bourdieu who coined the phrase “the field of cultural production.” What was the “field” which...
How Abstract Expressionism Re-Defined Painting and Art: Abstract Expressionism and Meaning The American artists had early training from Modernist masters in New York City that prepared the ground with the abstract Cubism of Piet Mondrian and with Surrealist ideas and...
THE ART SCENE SHIFTS FROM EUROPE TO AMERICA In 1983, art historian, Serge Guilbaut, wrote a provocatively titled book, How New York Stole the Idea of Modern Art. How, indeed? While the first chapter of this book discusses the politics of the New York intelligentsia...
THE GERMAN ARTISTS BETWEEN THE WARS, PART ONE GEORGE GROSZ Nothing is more sad than a perpetually disillusioned person. George Grosz spent his art career as a social critic; an artist who dissected his own tragic era with a knife-edged line. This podcast investigates...
Marcel Duchamp, Part Three Although, when The Large Glass was “completed,” Marcel Duchamp claimed to have given up art for chess. However, upon his death in 1968, it was revealed that the old trickster had one one last work of art, Étant Donnes. On one...
Das Staatliche Bauhaus The Fate of the Bauhaus Buildings The decline of the school probably began in 1928 when the founding Director, Walter Gropius departed but the last two directors were under pressures that Gropius escaped. Mies was able to do little more to save...
