Answer 4 out of 5 questions

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AGNY Study Pack # 4

Jacob Lawrence, No. 2, Main Control Panel, Nerve Center of Ship, 1944

Jacob Lawrence (1917–2000), No. 2, Main Control Panel, Nerve Center of Ship, 1944. United States Coast Guard Museum, New London, CT.

Benton, Exterminate!, 1942 (from “The Year of Peril” series)

In the wake of Pearl Harbor, Benton decided to create gigantic propaganda pictures to be hung in Kansas City's Union Station. He wanted to jolt ''the milling travelers'' to comprehend the evils of fascism. Working at breakneck speed, Benton within six weeks painted eight brutal works of unbridled violence that are collectively known as the ''Year of Peril'' series: ''Starry Night,'' ''Again,'' ''Indifference,'' ''Casualty,'' ''The Sowers,'' ''The Harvest,'' ''Invasion'' and ''Exterminate!'' Benton had one overriding objective in mind: to portray America's enemies as genocidal maniacs.

Harry Sternberg, Jon Corbino, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, George Grosz  Decorations for 1943 Art Students League Costume Ball, Roosevelt Hotel, NYC

Identification on verso (handwritten): Left to right; Harry Sternberg, Jon Corbino, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, George Grosz.  Identification on Art Student's League mailing label pasted on verso (handwritten): Decorations for 1943 for League Costume Ball, Roosevelt Hotel, 1943. Published in: Archives of American Art Journal v. 13, no. 2, p. 3; v. 26, no. 2-3, p. 52.Forms part of: Miscellaneous photographs collection Citation: Faculty of the Art Students League working on a mural of Hitler, 1943 / Brown Brothers (New York, N.Y.), photographer. Miscellaneous photographs collection, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Tchelitchew, Portrait of Lincoln Kirstein, 1937

Tchelitchew, Pavel (1898-1957) - 1937 Portrait of Lincoln Kirstein School of American Ballet

Pavel Tchelitchew, Portrait of Lincoln Kirstein, 1937, oil on canvas. On view in ﾒLincoln Kirsteinﾓ at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, through August 27.Pavel Tchelitchew was a Russian-born surrealist painter, set designer and costume designer. He left Russia in 1920, lived in Berlin from 1921 to 1923, and moved to Paris in 1923. In Paris Tchelitchew became acquainted with Gertrude Stein and, through her, the Sitwell and Gorer families. He and Edith Sitwell had a long-standing close friendship and they corresponded frequently.His first U.S. show was of his drawings, along with other artists, at the newly-opened Museum of Modern Art in 1930. In 1934, he moved from Paris to New York City with his partner, writer Charles Henri Ford. From 1940 to 1947, he provided illustrations for the Surrealist magazine View, edited by Ford and writer and film critic Parker Tyler. His most significant work is the painting Hide and Seek, painted in 1940ﾐ42, and currently on display in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He became a United States citizen in 1952 and died in Grottaferrata, Italy in 1957.Tchelitchew's early painting was abstract in style, described as Constructivist and Futurist and influenced by his study with Aleksandra Ekster in Kiev. After emigrating to Paris he became associated with the Neoromanticism movement. He continuously experimented with new styles, eventually incorporating multiple perspectives and elements of surrealism and fantasy into his painting. As a set and costume designer, he collaborated with Serge Diaghliev and George Balanchine, among others.Among Tchelitchew's well-known paintings are portraits of Natalia Glasko, Edith Sitwell and Gertrude Stein and the works Phenomena (1936-1938) and Cache Cache (1940-1942). He designed sets for Ode (Paris, 1928), L'Errante (Paris, 1933), Nobilissima Visione (London, 1938) and Ondine (Paris, 1939), among other productions.

16 East 57th street near Madison: Paul Rosenberg & Co (established in NYC in 1940)

16 East 57th street near Madison Paul Rosenberg & Co.

Pierre Matisse opened the gallery which bore his name in Nov. 1931 in the recently completed Fuller Building in N.Y., 41 East 57th Street

Artists exhibiting in the “Artists in Exile” show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York, March 1942, photo by George Platt Lynes

First row (left to right): Matta, Ossip Zadkine, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger Second row (id.): André Breton, Piet Mondrian, André Masson, Amédée Ozenfant, Jacques Lipchitz, Pavel Tchelitchew, Kurt Seligmann, Eugene Berman.

Artists exhibiting in the ﾒArtists in Exileﾓ show at the Pierre Matisse Gallery,ﾊNew York, March 1942 -by George Platt Lynes First row (left to right):ﾊMatta, Ossip Zadkine, Yves Tanguy, Max Ernst, Marc Chagall, Fernand L使er Second row (id.):ﾊAndr� Breton, Piet Mondrian, Andr� Masson, Am仕仔 Ozenfant, Jacques Lipchitz, Pavel Tchelitchew, Kurt Seligmann, Eugene Berman.

Fernand Léger, Study for Cinematic Mural, Study II , 1938-39

Leger, Fernand (1881-1955) - 1938-39 Study for Cinematic Mural, Study II (Museum of Modern Art, New York City)Gouache and pencil on board; 50.2 x 38.0 cm 1931 That September, on invitation from Sara and Gerald Murphy, Léger travels to the U.S. for the first time

1933: Léger exhibition at Kunsthaus Zürich 1935:Second trip to America. Visits his exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Art Institute, Chicago 1936: In early March, Alfred Barr’s exhibition “Cubism and Abstract Art,” including five Léger paintings, opens at the MoMA 1938: On September 15, Léger embarks on his third American journey, occasioned by a mural commission for Nelson Rockefeller’s apartment in New York 1939: Design for a Cinematic Mural at the Rockefeller Center, New York, to be executed in collaboration with American architect Wallace K. Harrison. The mural is envisaged in the form of a film, with images that move in harmony with the escalators in the Radio City Building. The project is rejected. In early March, Léger returns to France 1940: Leaves France, going by ship from Marseille via Lisbon to the U.S. Exile in New York (1940-45)

Harry Holtzman , Sculpture I, 1940

Sculpture I, 1940, Harry Holtzman, Collection of The Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

Piet Mondrian, Broadway Boogie Woogie, 1942-43

MoMA Piet Mondrian. Broadway Boogie Woogie. 1942-43 Oil on canvas, 50 x 50" (127 x 127 cm). Mondrian, who had escaped to New York from Europe after the outbreak of World War II, delighted in the city's architecture. He was also fascinated by American jazz, particularly boogie-woogie, finding its syncopated beat, irreverent approach to melody, and improvisational aesthetic akin to what he called, in his own work, the "destruction of natural appearance; and construction through continuous opposition of pure means—dynamic rhythm." In this painting, his penultimate, Mondrian replaced the black grid that had long governed his canvases with predominantly yellow lines that intersect at points marked by squares of blue and red. These atomized bands of stuttering chromatic pulses, interrupted by light gray, create paths across the canvas suggesting the city's grid, the movement of traffic, and blinking electric lights, as well as the rhythms of jazz.

Piet Mondrian, Victory Boogie Woogie, 1942-1944

Piet Mondrian, Victory Boogie Woogie, 1942-1944. Oil paint, pieces of paper and plastic, and black chalk on canvas, 127 x 127 cm, vertical axis 179 cm. On loan from the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage, Amsterdam. Acquired for the nation thanks to a gift from the Nederlandsche Bank.

At the time of Mondrianﾕs fairly sudden death in early 1944 at the age of seventy-two, Victory Boogie Woogie was still unfinished. The lozenge-shaped painting was covered with loosely attached bits of coloured paper and plastic which Mondrian was using to try out new emphases and rhythms. Given the time, he would probably have replaced them by a rather more regular, painted version of the fragmented visual rhythms. He never had the chance to do so but, even in this state, Victory Boogie Woogie is an impressive painting and provides moving evidence that Mondrian died at the very height of his creative powers. Its distinctive lozenge shape underlines the fact that Mondrian was seeking to maximise the spatial spread of his composition. The interwoven colours and the rhythm of the fragmented network of lines undoubtedly reflect the bustle of big-city life in New York.  A feast for the eye Victory Boogie Woogie is a feast for the eye. Blue, yellow, red and white are interwoven over the entire surface, fragmented into larger and smaller planes and small blocks of colour. White is varied by shades of grey, blue by blocks so dark that they look almost black, and yellow in a couple of conspicuous places by shades of ochre. Even the red is varied here and there, though less obviously so. The dynamic of the composition is based on horizontal and vertical lines, but these now provide little firm footing. They are, as it were, fragmented by the small blocks of colour, and are repeatedly doubled, interrupted before they reach the edge of the canvas and fanned out. A striking feature is the way smaller and larger elements of the composition interlock, creating startling syncopations in the often driving visual rhythms and ensuring that the composition remains open on every side.   Although the title Victory Boogie Woogie was not invented by Mondrian, it is known that he saw this painting as a follow-up to his 1942-1943 painting Broadway Boogie Woogie and that he used the word ﾔVictoryﾕ in relation to it. The term Boogie Woogie refers to a new kind of jazz then popular in New York, in which short melody lines were interrupted by open rhythmical patterns. Victory undoubtedly refers to the triumph of a new form of art in a free world, something in which Mondrian continued to have unshakeable faith even in the darkest days of the Second World War.

Piet Mondrian studio at the time of his death, 1944 15 East 59th Street, New York, photographed by Fritz Glarner

Lipchitz, study for Arrival, 1941

Lipchitz, Arrival, 1941

Jacques Lipchitz This gouache is a pictorial study for the bronze sculpture of 1941 Arrival (A.G. Wilkinson, no. 345) 

Marc Chagall , White Crucifixion, 1938

Marc Chagall, Around Her, 1945

(On 2 September 1944, Bella died suddenly due to a virus infection, which was not treated due to the wartime shortage of medicine)

Marc Chagall, Autour d’Elle, 1945, Beaubourg centre Georges Pompidou On 2 September 1944, Bella died suddenly due to a virus infection, which was not treated due to the wartime shortage of medicine. As a result, he stopped all work for many months, and when he did resume painting his first pictures were concerned with preserving Bella's memory.[14] Wullschlager writes of the effect on Chagall: "As news poured in through 1945 of the ongoing Holocaust at Nazi concentration camps, Bella took her place in Chagall's mind with the millions of Jewish victims." He even considered the possibility that their "exile from Europe had sapped her will to live.

A consortium of civic leaders and others led by, and under the initiative of, John D. Rockefeller III built Lincoln Center as part of the "Lincoln Square Renewal Project" during Robert Moses' program of urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s

Wallace Harrison: the center's master plan and the Metropolitan Opera House

September 23, 1962: Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen ) opened.

April 6, 1964: Lincoln Center Fountain opened. Renamed the Revson Fountain

April 23, 1964: New York State Theater (now David H. Koch Theater) opened.

October 14, 1965: Vivian Beaumont Theater and the Forum (now Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater) opened.

November 30, 1965: The Library & Museum of the Performing Arts opened.

September 16, 1966: The Metropolitan Opera House opened.

Wallace Harrison: the center's master plan and the Metropolitan Opera HouseMay 14, 1959: Ground-breaking ceremony with U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower

September 23, 1962: Philharmonic Hall (now Avery Fisher Hall) opened. A two-hour live CBS special, Opening Night at Lincoln Center, preserved the event on videotape.

April 6, 1964: Lincoln Center Fountain opened. Renamed the Revson Fountain

April 23, 1964: New York State Theater opened.

October 14, 1965: Vivian Beaumont Theater and the Forum (now Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater) opened.

November 30, 1965: The Library & Museum of the Performing Arts opened.

September 16, 1966: The Metropolitan Opera House opened.

Chagall, The Triumph of Music (left) and The Sources of Music (Right) , 1966

In 1966, master painter Marc Chagall painted to enormous murals for the Metropolitan Opera, entitled “The Triumph of Music” (left) and “The Sources of Music.” (Right) The murals, considered New York treasures, were painted in Paris then sent to New York. They are visible from the plaza of Lincoln Center.

SURREALISM, noun, masc., Pure psychic automatism by which it is intended to express, either verbally or in writing, the true function of thought. Thought dictated in the absence of all control exerted by reason, and outside all aesthetic or moral preoccupations.

ENCYCL. Philos. Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association heretofore neglected, in the omnipotence of the dream, and in the disinterested play of thought. It leads to the permanent destruction of all other psychic mechanisms and to its substitution for them in the solution of the principal problems of life.

André Breton, “First Surrealist Manifesto,” 1924

The first Surrealist manifesto was written by Breton and released to the public in 1924. The document defines Surrealism as:

"Psychic automatism in its pure state, by which one proposes to express — verbally, by means of the written word, or in any other manner — the actual functioning of thought. Dictated by the thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concern."

Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art (1936)

Fantastic Art, Dada, Surrealism, The Museum of Modern Art’s first exhibition to focus on Dada, was organized by founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., in 1936. It was the most comprehensive presentation of Dada works since the Dadaists’ own exhibitions. It was also the first to be organized by a nonparticipant and the first to present Dada as a historical movement. The exhibition was rife with controversy and provoked fierce reactions from battling factions among the Dadaists and the Surrealists. For example, Tristan Tzara, a leader of the Dada movement and one of the exhibition’s most important lenders, threatened to forbid Barr from exhibiting his loans when he learned that the exhibition’s title had been changed from The Fantastic in Art to include Surrealism and that the French Surrealist André Breton was to write the catalogue preface. For their part, Breton and French Surrealist poet Paul Éluard disapproved of the final format of the exhibition; they wanted it to be an official Surrealist “manifestation.” Critical response to the exhibition was mixed. In 1937, when the show circulated around the country, lender Katherine Dreier withdrew her artworks and feuded with Barr over his inclusion of works by children and “the insane,” and A. Conger Goodyear, President of the Museum’s board of trustees, requested that other items be removed.

André Masson, Automatic Drawing, 1924

Andre Masson, Automatic Drawing, 1924

André Masson, Pasiphaë, 1945

The daughter of Helios and Perse, and wife of King Minos, Pasiphaë was the mother of Glaucus, Andogeus, Phaedra, and Ariadne. When Minos had the misfortune of insulting Poseidon, the god kindled a passionate love in Pasiphae for a bull. She had Daedalus design a construction so that she could mate with the bull, and thus she became the mother of the Minotaur.

André Masson (French, 1896–1987) Pasiphaë 1945 Medium:Pastel on black paperDimensions:27 1/2 x 38 1/8" (69.8 x 96.8 cm)Credit Line:Gift of André Masson MoMA Number:346.1977Copyright:© 2013 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

The daughter of Helios and Perse, and wife of King Minos. She was the mother of Glaucus, Andogeus, Phaedra, and Ariadne. When Minos had the misfortune of insulting Poseidon, the god kindled a passionate love in Pasiphae for a bull. She had Daedalus design a construction so that she could mate with the bull, and thus she became the mother of the Minotaur.

Yves Tanguy, The Furniture of Time, 1939

The Furniture of Time - Yves Tanguy 1939 MoMA, New York Oil on canvas46 x 35 1/4" (116.7 x 89.4 cm)

Matta, Vertigo of Eros, 1944

Matta, An oil on canvas, the 1944 "La revolte des contraires" is a vortex of canary yellow rhomboids, rippled by undulating black lines and pocked by eruptions of prismatic colors.

Vertigo of Eros, 1944 Roberto Matta (Chilean, 1911–2002)The Vertigo of Eros Date:1944Medium:Oil on canvasDimensions:6' 5" x 8' 3" (195.6 x 251.5 cm)Credit Line:Given anonymously MoMA Number:65.1944

Ernst, The Barbarians, 1937 (Met Museum)

The Barbarians, 1937 Max Ernst (French, born Germany, 1891ﾐ1976)Oil on cardboard9 1/2 x 13 in. (24 x 33 cm) Jacques and Natasha Gelman Collection, 1998 (1999.363.21) MET MUSEUM ｩ 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Ernst, Europe after the Rain, 1940-42 (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford)

Ernst Europe after the Rain 1940-42 : : Oil on canvas : 1 ft 9 1/2 in x 4 ft 10 1/4 in Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut.

Peggy Guggenheim’s residence, NYC, 1942

Left to right front: Stanley William Hayter, Leonora Carrington, Frederick Kiesler, Kurt Seligmann Middle: Max Ernst, Amédée Ozenfant, André Breton, Fernand Léger, Berenice Abbott Back: Jimmy Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, John Ferren, Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian 

Left to right front: Stanley William Hayter, Leonora Carrington, Frederick Kiesler, Kurt Seligmann Middle: Max Ernst, Amédee Ozenfant, Andre Breton, Fernand Leger, Berenice Abbott Back: Jimmy Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim, John Ferren, Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian (Photographer unknown (MB))

Peggy Guggenheim sitting in Art of This Century Gallery, 1942-7 (space designed by Frederick Kiesler)

Marguerite "Peggy" Guggenheim (August 26, 1898 – December 23, 1979) was an American art collector, bohemian and socialite. Born to a wealthy New York City family, she was the daughter of Benjamin Guggenheim, who went down with the Titanic in 1912, and the niece of Solomon R. Guggenheim, who would establish the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation. Peggy Guggenheim created a noted art collection in Europe and America primarily between 1938 and 1946. She exhibited this collection as she built it and, in 1949, settled in Venice, where she lived and exhibited her collection for the rest of her life.

Art of This Century Gallery, 1942-7

A few days before the Germans reached Paris, Peggy Guggenheim had to abandon her plans for a Paris museum, and fled to the south of France, from where, after months of safeguarding her collection and artist friends, she left Europe for New York in the summer of 1941. There, in the following year, she opened a new gallery which actually was in part a museum. It was called The Art of This Century Gallery. Three of the four galleries were dedicated to Cubist and Abstract art, Surrealism and Kinetic art, with only the fourth, the front room, being a commercial gallery.

Peggy Guggenheim and Jackson Pollock in front of Pollock's Mural, 1943

c. 1944

Museum of Non-Objective Painting, East 54th Street, New York 1939-1947

This installation is based upon the galleries of the original Museum of Non-Objective Painting, which Solomon R. Guggenheim and Hilla Rebay, his personal curator and the museum's first director, opened on East 54th Street in Manhattan in 1939. The spaces of the former automobile showroom had been transformed by architect William Muschenheim under Rebay's direction. Rebay, who was also a painter, believed passionately in abstract painting's spiritual power. Thus, she set out to create an environment for art that would allow its metaphysical qualities to be best experienced. Quite unlike the Museum of Modern Art, whose collections and new International Style building emphasized the relationship between Modern art and society, the Museum of Non-Objective Painting reflected Rebay's desire to create a setting that would make visitors feel as though they had entered another world. The interior walls and windows of the museum were covered in pleated gray velour, shutting out the exterior world. Paintings were set like altarpieces in wide, gilded frames and hung as low as a few inches from the floor, which forced viewers to orient themselves to the artworks positions. To enhance her vision of a temple for modern painting, Rebay played classical music on a phonograph, which echoed throughout the museum. In 1947, the museum moved to a townhouse at 1071 Fifth Avenue. That building was demolished when construction began in 1956 for the new museum which by that time had been renamed the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

Museum of Non-Objective Painting (interior)

MNOP c. 1940

Whitelaw Reid House (Villard Houses) Madison Ave., N.Y.C., ca. 1910-1915

Whitelaw Reid's Home, N.Y.C. (LOC)Bain News Service,, publisher .Whitelaw Reid House, Madison Ave., N.Y.C., ca. 1910-1915

ﾒFIRST PAPERS OF SURREALISMﾓ 1942 ART EXHIBIT CATALOGUE7 ¼ﾓ x 10 ½ﾓ soft cover with 52 pages for exhibit held on Madison Avenue in New York City from October 14 to November 7, 1942 by Coordinating Council of French Relief Societies, Inc. Stapled wraps as issued. Front and back covers designed by Duchamp with stone barn wall with die-cut bullet holes on front cover and Swiss cheese on back cover.The famous ﾒBoatload of Madmenﾓ as the French surrealists became known, organized a landmark exhibit of their work and writings for which this was the catalogue. A cross-section of text and images with forward by Sidney Janis. Text article ﾒExplorers of the Pluriverseﾓ by R. A. Parker has a paragraph devoted to pulp stories by Clark Ashton Smith. Nicely illustrated catalogue includes panel from a 1942 Superman comic book showing Superman flying with Lois Lane. Examples of art with artistﾕs photos include: Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Joan Miro, Roberto Matta, and photos include Pablo Picasso, Father Divine, and more. An important document of an early Surrealist exhibit. Generally in very good condition.

Duchamp, Sixteen Miles of String (his twine), 1942 (“First Papers of Surrealism” exhibition)

Anne Sinclair, wife of Dominique Strauss-Kahn (pictured together), is the granddaughter of Paul Rosenberg,

Marcel Duchamp, Boîte-en-valise, 1935-41

SSalvador Dali,

The Persistence of Memory, 1931

Bought by dealer Julien Levy and donated to MoMA

Joan Miró The Hunter (Catalan Landscape)Montroig, July 1923-winter 1924 On viewThe Museum of Modern Art,Floor 3, Exhibition GalleriesMediumOil on canvasDimensions25 1/2 x 39 1/2" (64.8 x 100.3 cm)CreditPurchaseObject number95.1936Copyright© 2019 Successió Miró / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Dali, Lobster Telephone, 1936

Dali Lobster Telephone 1936 The aspect of paranoia that Dalí was interested in and which helped inspire the method was the ability of the brain to perceive links between things which rationally are not linked. Dalí described the paranoiac-critical method as a "spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena."

Employing the method when creating a work of art uses an active process of the mind to visualize images in the work and incorporate these into the final product. An example of the resulting work is a double image or multiple image in which an ambiguous image can be interpreted in different ways.André Breton (by way of Guy Mangeot) hailed the method, saying that Dalí's paranoiac-critical method was an "instrument of primary importance" and that it "has immediately shown itself capable of being applied equally to painting, poetry, the cinema, the construction of typical Surrealist objects, fashion, sculpture, the history of art, and even, if necessary, all manner of exegesis."[1]

Dalí, Venus de Milo with Drawers, 1936

Dalí,

The Anthropomorphic Cabinet, 1936

Salvador Dalí Venus de Milo with Drawers, 1936 Painted plaster with metal pulls and mink pompons

38 5/8 x 12 3/4 x 13 3/8 in. (98 x 32.5 x 34 cm) Through prior gift of Mrs. Gilbert W. Chapman, 2005.424 AIC

“Chest of Drawers”!!!!

Salvador Dali, Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment, 1934-1935 (AIC)

Salvador Dali,Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment, 1934-1935

Gouache, with graphite, on commercially printed magazine paper

11 1/10 × 7 in

28.3 × 17.8 cm

Art Institute of Chicago

Salvador Dalí

Spanish, 1904-1989

Mae West's Face which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment, 1934–35

Salvador Dalí, Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time, 1939 (Boijmans, Rotterdam)

Salvador Dalí, Shirley Temple, The Youngest, Most Sacred Monster of the Cinema in Her Time 1939

Gouache, pastel and collage on cardboard 75 cm × 100 cm (30 in × 39 in) Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

bout Shirley Temple, le plus jeune monstre sacré du cinéma de son temps

Shirley Temple was a popular child star in the 1930s. In this fantasy image of the Hollywood starlet, Dalí has collaged her head, taken from a magazine, onto the body of a lion. He has transformed her into a modern sphinx, who devours her public.

Dalí, Autumnal Cannibalism, 1936 (Tate Modern)

Salvador Dalí (1904‑1989 ) Autumnal Cannibalism 1936 Oil paint on canvass upport: 651 x 651 mm frame: 898 x 899 x 85 mm Tate Modern Painted just after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936, this work shows a couple locked in a cannibalistic embrace. They are pictured on a table-top, which merges into the earthy tones of a Spanish landscape in the background. The conflict between countrymen is symbolised by the apple balanced on the head of the male figure, which refers to the legend of William Tell, in which a father is forced to shoot at his son.

Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans [Premonition of Civil War], 1936 (PMA)

Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War) Made in Spain, Europe 1936 Salvador Dalí, Oil on canvas39 5/16 x 39 3/8 inches (99.9 x 100 cm) The Louise and Walter Arensberg Collection, 1950 Phildealphia Museum

With its flair for detail as gruesome as it is meticulous, Salvador Dalí's Surrealist painting style might well have been invented for the depiction of the unique horrors of the Spanish Civil War. This painting, however, is one of only a handful in which Dalí turned his attention to the tragedy that beset his homeland on July 17, 1936, when General Francisco Franco led a military coup d'état against the democratically elected Popular Front government. The artist's savage vision of his country as a decomposing figure tearing itself apart preceded the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War and thus prophetically foretold the atrocities committed during this bloody conflict.

Dali, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), 1936

After Francisco Franco's victory in Spain, Guernica was sent to the United States to raise funds for Spanish refugees. . . . At Picasso's request the safekeeping of Guernica was then entrusted to the Museum of Modern Art, and it was his expressed desire that the painting should not be delivered to Spain until liberty and democracy had been established in the country.

Dalí retrospective exhibition, MoMA, 1941

Dali, Soft Self-Portrait with Grilled Bacon, 1941

Dali, Self Portrait with Grilled Bacon 1941 Gallery: Gala-Salvador Dali Foundation, Figueras, Spain

Dali, Dream of Venus pavilion (1939 World’s Fair, Flushing, NY)

The proposal was submitted by Julien Levy, an art dealer, and Ian Woodner, an architect. As a pioneering venue for Surrealism in America, Levy’s New York gallery trafficked in the art of dreams, desires, and the reality of the unconscious mind. The Surrealists saw themselves as revolutionaries set to change modern life along irrational lines.Soft-pedaling the revolution, Levy advanced Surrealism's public potential: "It need not only be applied to Art, but may also apply to other activities (architecture, interior decoration, fashion, advertising, etc.) of which humor would not be the least significant. It is therefore possible to build a 'Surrealist House' that is hilarious entertainment and at the same time an authentic surrealist experiment."

Fernand Léger, Adieu New York, 1946

Fernand Léger Adieu New York, 1946 Centre Georges Pompidou, Mus仔 national d'art moderne

Leger on bad American taste--14th street, 5th avenue, avenue B. Bad taste= America!!!

Arshile Gorky & André Breton in Connecticut, 1945

photographiés par Elisa Breton

aux Etats-Unis en 1945.

Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, c. 1926–36

Arshile Gorky (Vostanik Manoug Adoian) and his mother, in Van, Turkish Armenia, 1912

Arshile Gorky, The Artist and His Mother, c. 1926–36. Oil on canvas, 60 × 50 in. (152.4 × 127 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Julien Levy for Maro and Natasha Gorky in memory of their father 50.17

Arshile Gorky, Organization, 1933-6

Arshile Gorky, Organization, 1933-36, oil on canvas, 49 3ﾚ4 x 60 in., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund 1979, ｩ 2010 Estate of Arshile Gorky/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New YorkGorky supported himself during the Great Depression by working as a mural painter for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration (FAP/WPA), a government relief effort aimed at easing the plight of unemployed artists. He also pursued his own work in his Union Square studio, using money he earned from the FAP to purchase oil paint, canvases, and other supplies. During his free time, Gorky created such important paintings as Organization (1933ﾐ36), which represents the high point of his engagement with cubism during the mid-ﾕ30s. For his studies for Organization, Gorky found inspiration in the work of Fernand L使er, Piet Mondrian, Francis Picabia, and his close friend Stuart Davis, but as he worked and reworked the paintingﾕs thickly encrusted surface over a period of three years, Gorky assimilated these artistsﾕ disparate visions into his own highly original composition.Gorkyﾕs budding interest in surrealism during the early ﾕ30s eventually encouraged him to move away from the spatial effects of cubism seen in Organization toward a new form of abstraction that incorporated biomorphic shapes derived from the work of Jean Arp and Joan Mir�, while also bearing his own unique imprint. Between 1934 and 1936, Gorky would combine organic imagery drawn from the work of these artists with the interlocking geometric shapes of his Nighttime, Enigma, and Nostalgia works to produce his Khorkom series, titled after his cherished hometown on the shores of Lake Van in Turkish Armenia.

Picasso, The Studio, 1927-8 (MoMA acquires1935)

Picasso, The Studio, 1927-8 MoMA MoMA ac quires 1935 !!!!

Arshile Gorky, Agony, 1947

Arshile Gorky (American, b. Armenia, 1904-1948). Agony, 1947. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 1/2 in. (101.6 x 128.3 cm). A. Conger Goodyear Fund. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Nina Leen, group photo of “The Irascibles” exhibition (November 24, 1951, Life magazine)

Front row: Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko

Middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin

Back row: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne

The photograph was taken by Nina Leen (January 15, 1951), and appeared in Life magazine. This very famous photo, known as the photo of "The Irascibles " shows 15 of the 18 Abstract Expressionist painters:

“Abstract Expressionism”

(Action Painting, New York School)

AE: Robert Coates, 1946

Motherwell, Elegy to the Spanish Republic # 34, 1954

Picasso, Guernica, 1937

In 1948, he began to work with his celebrated Elegy to the Spanish Republic theme, which he continued to develop throughout his life. Motherwell intended his Elegies to the Spanish Republic (over 100 paintings, completed between 1948 and 1967) as a "lamentation or funeral song" after the Spanish Civil War. They have various associations, but Motherwell himself related them to the display of the dead bull's testicles in the Spanish bullfighting ring.

De Kooning, Dark Pond, 1948

De K. Dark Pond 1948

Willem de Kooning, Woman I, 1950-2

Willem de Kooning (American, born the Netherlands. 1904–1997) Woman, I Date:1950-52Medium:Oil on canvasDimensions:6' 3 7/8" x 58" (192.7 x 147.3 cm)Credit Line:PurchaseMoMA Number:478.1953

Hedda Sterne, Machine 5, 1950

Duchamp, Sixteen Miles of String (his twine), 1942 (“First Papers of Surrealism” exhibition)

Hedda Sterne, Machine 5, 1950, Oil on canvas, 51 x 38 1/8 in., Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sterne was born in Bucharest, Romania in 1910 and although a generation younger than Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Janco, Tristan Tzara and Victor Brauner, she was aware from a young age of the Romanian artistic avant-garde surrounding her. Brauner, a Surrealist painter and a close friend of Sterne’s family, introduced her to the Surrealists in Paris in the late 1930s. Hans Arp, impressed by a work he saw in the 1939 11th Exposition du Salon des Surindépendants, brought Sterne’s work to the attention of Peggy Guggenheim, then in London. When Sterne, who is of Jewish origin, returned to German occupied Romania, she narrowly escaped a round up in Bucharest and emigrated to the US in 1941. In New York Peggy Guggenheim introduced Sterne to a vital community of émigré artists including Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, and Piet Mondrian. Sterne’s first solo exhibition was held in 1943 at the Wakefield Gallery in New York then under the direction of Betty Parsons. When Parsons opened her own gallery in 1946, Sterne joined the roster of Parsons’ most prized artists along with Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Ad Reinhardt.

Gottlieb, The Black Hand, 1943

Gottlieb, The Black Hand, 1943, With mythic form as a catalyst, they would merge the two European styles of Surrealism and abstraction. As a result, Rothko’s work became increasingly abstract; perhaps ironically, Rothko himself described the process as being one toward "clarity.”

New paintings were unveiled at a 1942 show at Macy's department store in New York City. In response to a negative review by the New York Times, Rothko and Gottlieb issued a manifesto (written mainly by Rothko) which stated, in response to the Times critic's self-professed "befuddlement" over the new work, "We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth."

Adolph Gottlieb,

Voyager's Return 1946

Adolph Gottlieb (American, 1903–1974) Voyager's Return Date:1946 Medium:Oil on canvasDimensions:37 7/8 x 29 7/8" (96.2 x 75.9 cm)Credit Line:Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Roy R. Neuberger MoMA Number:175.1946Copyright:© Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY

GALLERY LABEL TEXTOTHER TEXTS

Abstract Expressionist New York

October 3, 2010–April 25, 2011

Feeling stifled by the primacy of European art and the regionalism, social realism, and pure abstraction that dominated the New York scene, beginning in 1941 Gottlieb pioneered a new artistic model in works that came to be known as pictographs, including those on view here. Often featuring boxlike structures or grids, his paintings, drawings, and etchings offer a synthesis of material as diverse as classical mythology, modern psychoanalytic theory, Oceanic, Melanesian, Native American, and African visual cultures, and contemporary art and literature.

Adolph Gottlieb, Apaquogue, 1961

Apaquogue

1961

Adolph Gottlieb

American, 1903-1974Oil on canvas72 1/4 x 90 1/4 inches Modertm Artty Muyseum Fort Worth

Paint quality is meaningless if it does not express quality of feeling.

— Adolph Gottlieb

Adolph Gottlieb's painting Apaquogue contains two main areas that provide excellent examples of Action Painting and Color Field painting, the subcategories of Abstract Expressionism suggested by art historians. The lower areas of energetically painted, black brushstrokes are emblematic of Action Painting—the flowing, energized application of paint on the canvas that is associated with Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Willem DeKooning. The bright, faded-edged circles in the top portion of the canvas are used in much the same way that color was used by Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, and Ad Reinhardt—as purely expressive elements, rather than representational tools. Gottlieb’s Apaquogue belongs to his Burst series (a reference to the circles), and calls to mind a landscape. The horizontal orientation, the brushy strokes at the bottom, and the circles above, which seem to reference suns, moons, or planets, all assert that the painting is about some sort of place. In fact, the title Apaquogue comes from the name of a road near the ocean close to the artist’s home. Yet, rather than telling the viewer what this place looks like, Gottlieb’s piece offers us some hints as to how he feels about this setting, and perhaps others. The black brushstrokes possess an energetic and flowing movement, possibly from the sea, the tall grasses near the water, or the reflections of light on whatever is at his feet. The colored circles, with their faded edges, seem to exist with a kind of radiating stillness, as if far away. It is through these few abstract elements that Gottlieb communicates the emotional impact a place can have on us.

Mark Rothko, No. 1, 1949-1950

Artist: Mark Rothko No. 1 1949-1950 Technique: oil on canvas D imensions: 297 x 272 cm Gallery: Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA

Franz Kline ,White Forms,1955

Franz Kline (American, 1910–1962) White Forms 1955 Oil on canvas 6' 2 3/8" x 50 1/4" (188.9 x 127.6 cm)Credit Line:Gift of Philip Johnson MoMA Number:413.1977

Franz Kline, in studio (West 14th Street) with his black and white paintings New York, December 1954

Edward Clark,

“Artist painting on the streets of Montmartre,” Paris, 1946

Abstract expressionist painter, Franz Kline, in studio with his black and white paintings. Location: New York, NY, US Date taken: December 1954 Photographer: Fritz Goro Franz Jozef Kline (May 23, 1910 – May 13, 1962) was an American painter mainly associated with the abstract expressionist movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and attended Girard College, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys. He attended Boston University, and later taught at a number of institutions including Black Mountain College in North Carolina and Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.[1] He spent summers from 1956-62 painting in Provincetown, Massachusetts and died in New York City of a rheumatic heart disease. He was married to Elizabeth Vincent Parsons, a British ballet dancer.

Kline, Wanamaker Block, 1955

Wanamaker Block (NO:! 1955) has to be 1956 !!!!!!! Franz Kline, American, 1910 – 1962 Gift of Richard Brown Baker, B.A. 19351994.91.1 Yale Art Gallery Shown in 12 Amwericans show MoMA 1956

Hans Hofmann School of Fine Art, 52 West 8th Street

b. 1880 Known for his school in Munich, Hofmann was invited to teach summer school at the University of California at Berkeley in 1930 and again in 1931. In 1932 he moved to New York City and taught at the Art Students League. By autumn 1933, Hofmann had opened his own school on Madison Avenue, the Hans Hofmann School of Fine Arts. The next year he moved his school to East 57th Street and then to Greenwich Village in 1936. Hofmann also extended his program with summer sessions in Provincetown, beginning in 1935.

Cedar Tavern 24 University Place (btw 8th and 9th Streets)

The Cedar Tavern (or Cedar Street Tavern) was a bar and restaurant in Greenwich Village, New York City. It was most recently located at 82 University Place between 11th and 12th Streets. It was famous as a former hangout of many prominent Abstract Expressionist painters and beat writers. The establishment was located at 24 University Place in its heyday, but closed in April 1963 and reopened three blocks north in 1964 in a more upscale pub style.

The Cedar Tavern was opened in 1866 on Cedar Street.[1] In 1933 it moved to 55 West Eighth Street, and in 1945 it moved to 24 University Place.

Franz Kline

Helen Frankenthaler

Frank O’Hara

Front row: Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko

Middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin

Back row: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne

Gorky

Arshile Gorky (American, b. Armenia, 1904-1948). Agony, 1947. Oil on canvas. 40 x 50 1/2 in. (101.6 x 128.3 cm). A. Conger Goodyear Fund. The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Motherwell

Elegy to the Spanish Republic 34 1954

203 x 254 cmMotherwell's path to becoming an abstract artist was through philosophy, art history, and poetry. He studied at Stanford, Harvard, and then Columbia, where he was introduced to émigré Surrealists (including Matta) by art historian Meyer Schapiro. His particular genesis as an abstractionist has its basis in Mallarmé, whose dictum "To paint, not the thing, but the effect it provides" was pivotal.

Another pivotal moment came in 1937 in San Francisco, where he heard André Malraux speak at a rally on the Spanish Civil War. There, Motherwell found a great moral issue that would drive his work for years. In his words, it was the realization "that the world could, after all, regress." His Elegies to the Spanish Republic have been a vehicle to express what Motherwell has called "a funeral song for something one cared about" in abstract, visual terms. The series, which was sparked by a small drawing Motherwell made in 1948 to accompany a poem by Harold Rosenberg, evolved into an ongoing, years-long exploration of the theme in more than 150 monumental canvases.

Gottlieb

Apaquogue 1961 Adolph Gottlieb American, 1903-197\ Oil on canvas72 1/4 x 90 1/4 inches Adolph Gottlieb's painting Apaquogue contains two main areas that provide excellent examples of Action Painting and Color Field painting, the subcategories of Abstract Expressionism suggested by art historians. The lower areas of energetically painted, black brushstrokes are emblematic of Action Painting — the flowing, energized application of paint on the canvas that is associated with Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Willem DeKooning. The bright, faded-edged circles in the top portion of the canvas are used in much the same way that color was used by Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler, and Ad Reinhardt — as purely expressive elements, rather than representational tools. Gottlieb’s Apaquogue belongs to his Burst series (a reference to the circles), and calls to mind a landscape. The horizontal orientation, the brushy strokes at the bottom, and the circles above, which seem to reference suns, moons, or planets, all assert that the painting is about some sort of place. In fact, the title Apaquogue comes from the name of a road near the ocean close to the artist’s home. Yet, rather than telling the viewer what this place looks like, Gottlieb’s piece offers us some hints as to how he feels about this setting, and perhaps others. The black brushstrokes possess an energetic and flowing movement, possibly from the sea, the tall grasses near the water, or the reflections of light on whatever is at his feet. The colored circles, with their faded edges, seem to exist with a kind of radiating stillness, as if far away. It is through these few abstract elements that Gottlieb communicates the emotional impact a place can have on us.

Rothko

Artist: Mark Rothko No. 1 1949-1950 Technique: oil on canvas Dimensions: 297 x 272 cm Gallery: Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA

Kline

Wanamaker Block 1955 Franz Kline, American, 1910 – 1962 Gift of Richard Brown Baker, B.A. 19351994.91.1 Yale Art Gallery

Front row: Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks, Mark Rothko

Middle row: Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin

Back row: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne

George Cox, Siqueiros, Jackson Pollock, NYC, 1936

George Cox, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Jackson Pollock in New York, 1936 / unidentified photographer. Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution Siqueiros founded his Experimental Workshop (hereafter “SEW”) located at

5 West 14th Street near Union Square in New York City, at the beginning of 1936,

after the “International Conference of Artists” organized by artist members of the

U.S. Communist Party, as part of the “International policy of the Communist Party’s

Open Popular Front against fascism and war.” This was before he traveled to Spain

to become a soldier. In his New York workshop Siqueiros directed a group of young

American and Latin American artists who wished to participate in the Communist

party’s antifascist, antiwar propaganda efforts. The International Communist

Front allowed non-Communists to participate as long as they were united in their

antifascist positions. In 1936 Siqueiros declared, “We in The Experimental Workshop

do not represent a new union, nor any particular ideological group. The members

of this group are artists with several ideologies, interested in working on technical

and aesthetic problems within art, with the goal of finding new roads leading to

a methodology of functional revolutionary art, produced for the masses, with the

corresponding aesthetic control of those masses.”18.

Thomas Hart Benton, Plowing It Under, 1934

Jackson Pollock,

Going West, 1934-5

Going West ca. 1934-1935 Jackson Pollock

oil on fiberboard 15 1/8 x 20 3/4 in. (38.3 x 52.7 c Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Thomas Hart Benton

One of his earlier works, Going West is an example of Pollock’s early interests and painting style, as well as his own personal history. It has been suggested that this painting was inspired by a family photo of a bridge in Pollock’s birthplace, Cody, Wyoming. As an image of a pioneering family moving west, perhaps it is also a personal statement of the fact that his family moved west to Arizona and then later California when he was a child. The painting also exhibits the influence on Pollock’s style by his mentor Thomas Hart Benton, who was an American Regionalist painter.

Jackson Pollock, Stenographic Figure, c. 1942

Mondrian, 1943: “. . . The most interesting work I’ve seen so far in America.”

Stenographic Figure Jackson Pollock (American, 1912–1956)c. 1942. Oil on linen, 40 x 56" (101.6 x 142.2 cm). Mr. and Mrs. Walter Bareiss Fund. © 2012 Pollock-Krasner Foundation /MoMA Much of Pollock’s early work is characterized by a somber palette and congested pictorial space, but Stenographic Figure is bright and airy. On top of the flat, planar fields of color, Pollock painted two elementary humanoid forms, one near the right edge of the canvas and another just left of center, then made fine-lined calligraphic brushstrokes across the entire surface. Stenographic Figure was first shown in 1943, at the Spring Salon for Young Artists held by Peggy Guggenheim at her gallery Art of This Century. It garnered praise from, among others, artist Piet Mondrian, who described it as “the most interesting work I’ve seen so far in America.” When all the entries for the salon were assembled, Peggy was not impressed with Pollock’s 1942 canvas, then simply titled Painting, but Mondrian thought it was the most exciting painting he had seen and toldher, “You must watch this man.” The stunned Peggy replied, “You can’t compare this and the way you paint.” Mondrian answered, “So don’t compare this. The way I paint and the way I think are two different things.”[Krasner to Jaqueline Bograd Weld,interview, April 19, 1979, quoted inWeld, p. 305] W

Pollock, Male and Female, 1942 (PMA)

Male and Female 1942 (240 Kb); Oil on canvas, 73 1/4 x 49 in; Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jackson Pollock, Guardians of the Secret, 1943 (SF MoMA)

SFMoMA

Jackson Pollock, The She-Wolf, 1943

“To us art is an adventure into an unknown world, which can be explored only by those willing to take the risks. . . . We favor the simple expression of the complex thought. We are for the large shape because it has the impact of the unequivocal. We wish to reassert the picture plane. We are for flat forms because they destroy illusion and reveal truth.It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is crucial and only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless. That is why we profess spiritual kinship with primitive and archaic art .” Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb, "Manifesto," in New York Times, June 13, 1943

The She-Wolf Jackson Pollock (American, 1912–1956) 1943. Oil, gouache, and plaster on canvas, 41 7/8 x 67" (106.4 x 170.2 cm). MoMA

Purchase. © 2012 Pollock-Krasner Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York2.1944 In the early 1940s Pollock, like many of his peers, explored primeval or mythological themes in his work. The wolf in this painting may allude to the animal that suckled the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus, in the myth of the city’s birth. But “She-Wolf came into existence because I had to paint it,” Pollock said in 1944. In an attitude typical of his generation, he added, “Any attempt on my part to say something about it, to attempt explanation of the inexplicable, could only destroy it.” The She-Wolf was featured in Pollock’s first solo exhibition, at Art of This Century gallery in New York in 1943. MoMA acquired the painting the following year, making it the first work by Pollock to enter a museum collection.

Hans Namuth, photos of Pollock painting, 1950

Jackson Pollock, Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), 1950 (Met)

(American, 1912–1956)Enamel on canvas; 105 x 207 in. (266.7 x 525.8 cm)George A. Hearn Fund, 1957 (57.92) Met Museum, NY Pollock had created his first "drip" painting in 1947, the product of a radical new approach to paint handling. With Autumn Rhythm, made in October of 1950, the artist is at the height of his powers. In this nonrepresentational picture, thinned paint was applied to unprimed, unstretched canvas that lay flat on the floor rather than propped on an easel. Poured, dripped, dribbled, scumbled, flicked, and splattered, the pigment was applied in the most unorthodox means. The artist also used sticks, trowels, knives—in short, anything but the traditional painter's implements—to build up dense, lyrical compositions comprised of intricate skeins of line. There's no central point of focus, no hierarchy of elements in this allover composition in which every bit of the surface is equally significant. The artist worked with the canvas flat on the floor, constantly moving all around it while applying the paint and working from all four sides.

Size is significant: Autumn Rhythm is 207 inches wide. It assumes the scale of an environment, enveloping both for the artist as he created it and for viewers who confront it. The work is a record of its process of coming-into-being. Its dynamic visual rhythms and sensations—buoyant, heavy, graceful, arcing, swirling, pooling lines of color—are direct evidence of the very physical choreography of applying the paint with the artist's new methods. Spontaneity was a critical element. But lack of premeditation should not be confused with ceding control; as Pollock stated, "I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.”For Pollock, as for the Abstract Expressionists in general, art had to convey significant or revelatory content. He had arrived at abstraction having studied with Thomas Hart Benton, worked briefly with the Mexican muralists, confronted the methods and philosophy of the Surrealists, and immersed himself in a study of myth, archetype, and ancient and "primitive" art. And the divide between abstraction and figuration was more nuanced—there was a back-and-forth at various moments in his career. Toward the end of his life (he died in a car accident in 1956), he said, "I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're working out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge. … Painting is a state of being. … Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is."

“The genesis was the playground seen from my window at 5 St. Luke’s Place where I lived. Not that it is anything like that playground, which is very open and cheerful. I wanted a much more triste setting so I did much walking and noting in lower Eastside neighborhoods. The types came from years of looking and sorting. I remember thinking of Pontormo when I was doing the head of the foreground figure—for which I posed myself—not that the result looks like either. I also remember what painstaking work the fences required!” (Cadmus in an interview)

Paul Cadmus,

The Playground, 1948

George Tooker, American, 1920–2011 Children and Spastics, 1946 Egg tempera on gesso panelPanel: 24 ½ × 18 ½ in. (62.2 × 46.9 cm)Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Gift of Mary and Earle Ludgin Collection, 1981.38. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago.

Paul Cadmus,

The Playground, 1948

Wilhelmina Godfrey,

City Playground, 1949-50

Wilhelmina Godfrey (1914-1994), City Playground, 1949-50; wax emulsion and oil on board, 44 x 38 inches (Burchfield Penney Art Center, Gift of Carol Wing, 1994)

John Koch, Music, 1956-57

John Koch, The Sculptor, 1964

Prometheus, a character in ancient Greek myth . . . was punished by Zeus, king of the gods, for stealing fire and giving it to humans. The sculpture shows Prometheus chained to a rock and being tormented by a bird of prey. He is being freed by the god Hercules.

John Koch, The Sculptor, 1964

Alice Neel, Peggy, c. 1949

Alex Katz, Irving and Lucy, 1958

Alex Katz, 'Irving and Lucy', 1958

A new phase of mural painting and public art in Europe and in New York City beginning in the 1950s

Matisse, Vence chapel, 1948-51

Picasso, Vallauris chapel, 1952

Fernand Léger, murals for the plenary hall, General Assembly Bldg., United Nations headquarters, NYC 1952

One of the two Leger murals in the plenary hall of the General Assembly building at United Nations Headquarters in New York. The murals were painted on the east and west walls overlooking the press area of the Hall, by Mr. Bruce Gregory, who studied for two years in Paris with the French artist. The mural is cadmium yellow medium, toned down, United Nations blue, and white on a dark grey background.