Black Reflections

Black Reflections, 1959
Franz Kline (American, 1910–1962)
Oil and pasted paper on paper, mounted on Masonite

19 x 19 3/8 in. (48.3 x 49.2 cm)
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Norman Schneider, 1964 (64.146)
© 2011 The Franz Kline Estate / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Kline arrived at Abstract Expressionism later than others, having continued working in a figural style redolent of American Scene painters into the late 1940s. By that time, he was ready to concentrate on formal concerns, and his friendship with Willem de Kooning helped pave the way. As a means to break free of figurative representation, Kline experimented with a Bell-Opticon enlarger (in de Kooning's studio) to project some of his small drawings in large scale, and he made a leap toward abstraction. By late 1950, he was exhibiting abstract work that immediately brought him success. Large-scale black and white compositions of energetic, dramatic gestures in which wide swaths of paint thrust across the canvas. For many, even these works of complete abstraction still evoke figural references (to various landscapes or urban scenes of industry, or to trees or other referents). Kline acknowledged this residue of imagery: "There are forms that are figurative to me, and if they develop into a figurative image … it's all right if they do. I don't have the feeling that something has to be completely non-associative as far as figure form is concerned."

In 1956, Kline reintroduced color. Black Reflections, an intensely colored small work on paper, may in fact relate to an earlier black and white piece. Kline's work, so apparently spontaneous or impulsive in its emphasis on highly dramatic gestural brushstrokes, is, in fact, carefully considered. The sweeps and rapid brushings of both thick and diluted paint are the product of much meditation. He often drew inspiration for large compositions from small studies, and he also continued explorations of key elements in works even years after their creation. In this case, the central black shape is a mirror image of the shape in a black and white untitled painting of 1954.

Black Untitled

Black Untitled, 1948
Willem de Kooning (American, born the Netherlands, 1904–1997)
Oil and enamel on paper, mounted on wood 

29 7/8 x 40 1/4 in. (75.9 x 102.2 cm)
From the Collection of Thomas B. Hess, Gift of the heirs of Thomas B. Hess, 1984 (1984.613.7)
© 2011 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

The Abstract Expressionist painter Willem de Kooning was a masterful and prolific draftsman throughout his seven-decade-long career. His first known drawings were realistic still lifes, done in about 1921, while he was a young art student in Rotterdam. Following his arrival in the United States (in 1926), he supported himself as a house painter, then moved to New York City (in 1927), where he soon became friends with other ascendant artists, including John Graham, Stuart Davis, David Smith, Arshile Gorky, Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Mark Rothko. The gestural style of painting and the visual vocabulary of forms that he began to develop at this time continued to inform his later work. From the late 1930s through the '50s, his biomorphic abstractions (which allude to figures and landscapes) and his figurative series Woman (see 1984.613.6) placed him at the center of the Abstract Expressionist movement.

Between 1946 and 1949, de Kooning created a series of paintings on canvas and paper that explored biomorphic abstraction with a restricted palette of mostly black and white. Black Untitled of 1948 is a prime example of the allover compositions he produced that cohesively integrate positive and negative spaces, without representational allusions. Like his friend Franz Kline, de Kooning used both black and white paint, rather than letting the white of the paper show through. Sweeping white rivers of paint rush across the dark black ground, creating writhing intertwining shapes that suggest figures in a landscape setting, but without any specificity whatsoever.

Source: Willem de Kooning: Black Untitled (1984.613.7) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Symphony No. 1, The Transcendental

Symphony No. 1, The Transcendental, 1941–42
Richard Pousette-Dart (American, 1916–1992)
Oil on canvas 

86 x 140 1/2 in. (218.4 x 356.9 cm)
Purchase, Lila Acheson Wallace Gift, 1996 (1996.367)
© 2011 Estate of Richard Pousette-Dart / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

With this work of 1941–42, Pousette-Dart, then twenty-five years old, became the first of the Abstract Expressionists to make a mural-size painting. The monumental, heroic scale is integral to the artist's fundamental goals, expressive of highly personal, mystical beliefs that are as all-encompassing and vast as the work itself seemed at the time. Pousette-Dart worked in several media simultaneously, including painting and photography, and he also wrote a great deal, including poetry, art theory, and a host of other observations. He left more than 200 diaristic notebooks, providing an exceptional snapshot of the world view that shaped his art making. In a notebook probably written in 1940, he wrote, "Art is only significant as it takes us to the whole man and gives us new insights and opens secrets toward the unknown heart of our total mystic awareness." He also wrote, "My definition of religion amounts to art and my definition of art amounts to religion. … Art and religion are the inseparable structure and living adventure of the creative."

Like other Abstract Expressionists during the 1940s, Pousette-Dart looked to the art of other cultures for inspiration in seeking meaningful content. African, Pacific, Pre-Columbian, and American Indian art were seen as vehicles to express what Pousette-Dart described as "transcendent"—beyond empirical experience. This densely packed composition is organized around a structured grid that emerges sporadically. But Pousette-Dart breaks away from a basic Cubist structure to develop a new artistic vocabulary. Circles, teardrops, ovals, arcs, diamonds, and crosses evoke cosmic and organic forms, a rhythmic spread in black, white, and earth tones with points of bright color. Here and there, a nuanced reference to something identifiable emerges: perhaps a bird at the lower left, or some primitive weaponry at the upper left. The paint surface is layered, reworked, evidence of the artist's process of decision making in creating the work of art. The linear grid is apparent and principle elements are all outlined. But the image as a whole seems to pulsate in and out of focus. Pousette-Dart wanted an art that was "mysterious and transcending, yet solid and real."

The Glazier

The Glazier, 1940
Willem de Kooning (American, born The Netherlands, 1904–1997)

Oil on canvas 

54 x 44 in. (137.2 x 111.8 cm)
From the Collection of Thomas B. Hess, Gift of the heirs of Thomas B. Hess, 1984 (1984.613.1)
© 2011 The Willem de Kooning Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

In his fascination with landscape and figurative subjects, Willem de Kooning has always veered away from mainstream Abstract Expressionism, a movement of primarily abstract painting, in which he was nevertheless a leader. The Glazier belongs to an early series of men—placidly sitting or standing, singly or in pairs—which were painted in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Later, in the 1950s, his subjects favored fierce female characters (such as Woman, 1950, 1984.613.6), for which he is still best known.
The Glazier has a ghostly, elusive quality. Parts of the body, especially the arms and head, seem to evaporate into veils of color, while other sections of the picture—the face, right shoulder, trouser creases, and table covering—are quite solidly modeled. The representation of space is equally ambiguous, vacillating between what de Kooning called the "no-environment" of color fields and abstract rectangles, and the specificity of an elegant ewer placed on a table and reflected in a mirror. The artist said that his palette of somber earth tones was inspired by the Boscoreale frescoes that he had often come to see at the Metropolitan Museum.