Abstract Expressionism

During World War II, European artists fled to the United States, shifting the center of the art world from Paris to New York. They try to create a very direct style of painting that is spontaneous, expressional, and universal. They are highly influenced by automatism.

Like the surrealists, the Abstract Expressionists are influenced by psychoanalysis. Instead of Freud, they are reading the Swiss psychoanalyst Junge’s work about the collective unconscious: the idea of one’s individual private memories and experiences, there is a storehouse of feelings and symbolic associations that are common to all humanity. These are called archetypes.

artwhat.

during my first ever survey of western art class, my professor explained the difference between historians and art historians. historians, she said, were interested in old things. art historians, on the other hand, were interested in old things of quality. you don't hang garbage up on the walls of a museum; it has to be substantial and it has to mean something. so here you go; old things, made mostly by dudes long dead, of debatable degrees of quality but always with a constant level of importance. think of this as a deck of flash cards... sans the whole cards part.

Hobo theme by Mike Ballan with minor edits by Jess