![]() Then the individuality lost its crispness and vision. Each had a purely authentic personal manner. With Kline, De Kooning, Motherwell, Rothko too, we observe the beginnings of mannerism, as though they came to imitate themselves. None the less, what went wrong with the painting was mostly inherent, a consequence of that painting's style. And there were other social causes for the fall of Abstract Expressionism. In different ways this affected them all. Then there were the unexpected pressures of sudden fame and riches after years of poverty. Even by modern-art standards, the incidence of alcoholism in the Abstract Expressionists is frightening, and this show's catalogue has photographs of the Cedar Bar that make the artists' hang-out look like somewhere in hell. There's no doubt that the drinking had something to do with it. Abstract Expressionism - famously done by tough men, boozers and brawlers - was the most fragile of high-modern styles. Something was lost, and the nature of that loss is an unstated subject of the exhibition. A big canvas, a wide brush, some sweeping or gibbet-like marks from a pot of black - and there you were, an avant-garde picture completed in an hour or less. These reproductions (especially influential in later editions of Herbert Read's Concise History of Modern Painting) made Kline's art look so easy to do. In Britain, where very little was known about Kline except through reproduction, he was easily associated with the Beat Generation as well as with Abstract Expressionism. The huge calligraphy of Kline's canvases, like massively enlarged motifs from some previously hidden book of Zen, stimulated all sorts of talk at the end of the Fifties about 'the furthest edges of aesthetics', and the look of such paintings was widely imitated. But it is a timely tribute, offering many useful glimpses of the internal workings of the New York school, and reminding us why Kline's muffled gestures and black-and-white scaffolding were once so exciting. ![]() Horst P.FRANZ KLINE'S retrospective at the Whitechapel Gallery doesn't substantiate its organisers' claim that he was one of the great artists of the 20th century.Käthe Kollwitz, In Memoriam Karl Liebknecht. ![]() Meret Oppenheim, Object (Fur-covered cup, saucer, and spoon).Alberto Giacometti, The Palace at 4 a.m.René Magritte, The Treachery of Images (Ceci n’est pas une pipe).Surrealist Techniques: Subversive Realism.Hannah Höch, Cut with the Kitchen Knife Dada Through the Last Weimar Beer Belly Cultural Epoch of Germany.Dada’s “Aproximate Man”: A Portrait of Tristan Tzara (1919) by Marcel Janco.Raoul Hausmann, Spirit of the Age: Mechanical Head.Max Ernst, Two Children Are Threatened by a Nightingale.The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass).Art as concept: In Advance of the Broken Arm.Giorgio de Chirico, The Soothsayer’s Recompense.Carlo Carrà, Funeral of the Anarchist Galli.Gino Severini, Dynamic Hieroglyph of the Bal Tabarin.Umberto Boccioni, Unique Forms of Continuity in Space.De Stijl, Part III: The Total De Stijl Environment.De Stijl, Part II: Near-Abstraction and Pure Abstraction.Henri Cartier-Bresson, Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare.Amedeo Modigliani, Young Woman in a Shirt.Varvara Stepanova, The Results of the First Five-Year Plan.Kazimir Malevich, Suprematist Composition: White on White.Russian Neo-Primitivism: Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov.Robert Delaunay, Simultaneous Contrasts: Sun and Moon.The Cubist City – Robert Delaunay and Fernand Léger.Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso: Two Cubist Musicians.Le Viaduc à L’Estaque, (The Viaduct at L’Estaque).The Old Guitarist, and the question of beauty.How to paint like Pablo Picasso (Cubism).Pablo Picasso and the new language of Cubism.Who created the first abstract artwork?.Nazi looting: Egon Schiele’s Portrait of Wally.Franz Marc and the animalization of art.Alexej von Jawlensky, Young Girl in a Flowered Hat.Paula Modersohn-Becker, Self-Portrait Nude with Amber Necklace, Half-Length I.Women in the Interior I Museums Without Borders. ![]()
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