Artist Research Part 1

Juice Man 2009 Pensato

I Must Be Dreamin' 2007 Pensato

Punk Homer 2012 Pensato

PH-323 Still

PH-198 Still

PH-233 Still

Two Women With Still Life de kooning

Gotham News 1955 De Kooning

Woman III 1953 De Kooning

Blue Poles 1952 Pollock

Autumn Rhythm 1950 Pollock

Mural 1943 Pollock

Joyce Pensato

Pensato produced explosive, large-scale paintings which have a likeness to cartoon characters. Her seemingly frenzied technique, actually involving the deliberate marking of successive layers of bold linear gestures, rapid splattering and frequent erasures, resulting in alternately humours and sinister imagery. Pensato appears to place her figures in troubling psychological states and indeterminate spaces. She almost exclusively paints in shop-bought black and white enamel, while also employing charcoal and pastel to smaller scale drawings.

I thought she’d be interesting to look at as part of my project is taking very neat, illustrative drawings and recreating them in an abstract style. She is also using quite well known characters of cartoons such as Homer Simpson, similar to me; I am using familiar characters from various mythological stories.

Clyfford Still

Still painted rugged and potent images. With their crude palette-knifed and trowelled surface, their immense space, their strong colour, Still’s abstract works project a forcefulness perhaps unequalled in Abstract Expressionist painting. Of all the Abstract Expressionists, he seems to be the least influenced by cubism and surrealism. Though often tagged as evocative of the Far West and of the romantic sublime, his art includes so much more. It reflects what he saw to be decadence and doom of western culture and it forms an image of his own liberation. Still’s subject matter and its symbolism of his growth and struggle. In PH-323 of 1934, a naked and extremely elongated bone figure forcefully strides across a dramatic landscape. The figure, which dominates the dark, earth-coloured landscape, is seen in profile and has a simplified eye and mouth and shove like hands. Its striding movement announces the dynamism characteristic of much art and thought of the era, from the aggressive forward thrust of stream lined trains to Lipton’s sculptures such as ‘Herald’ of 1959.

Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning presents a paradox in many quarters, he is considered the quintessential Abstract expressionist, de Kooning helped to establish abstract expressionism as an original modern American style. Yet in many ways de Kooning is less representative of the main threads of abstract expressionism than many of the others. He is much more attached to the Old Master tradition than any of them, drawing constantly on the legacy of western figure painting. De Kooning has even criticized the idea of modern movements and ideologies as such. In general, his art bridges the gap between the grand tradition of figure painting and modern dislocations and reinventions. De Kooning is a realist in the sense of painting everyday figures, scenes and locales. Again this is unusual. Except for some works by Gorky, Bazioles and Motherwill, De Kooning is alone in being inspired by visual perceptions and themes of the everyday world. He gave mainstream abstract expressionism a grander, traditional and at the same time, more prosaic resonance than any other artist. De Konning’s abstractions indicate a knowing, sophisticated modernist who, in the 1930’s, was ahead of his fellow abstract expressionists. He turned against modernism to figure painting. I think De Kooning is my favourite abstract expressionist as he keeps a traditional element in his work. I like abstraxct expressionism, however the thing I think that its missing is a subject of some kind, whether it be a figure or an object or something else.

Jackson Pollock

Pollock helped to establish American painting, Abstract Expressionism and his own art as the vanguard of post-war modern painting. Joined with de Kooning’s art, Pollock’s led many observers to differentiate thematically as well as stylistically between the 2 branches of Abstract Expressionism. Pollock’s art is both a formal breakthrough and an individual statement of historical themes pervasive in his milieu. Pollock’s technique however is what I am most interested in. the fact that the movements weren’t thought about or planned in any way, I enjoy that idea of freedom. I experimented with different factors to create abstract expressionist paintings. I found the best way of creating these paintings was with my hands rather than with large brushes like Pollock.