The Life article was conceived after the group of artists who were labeled "the irascibles" protested the Metropolitan's "American Art Today" exhibition in the May 22, 1950 issue of The New York Times. Artists in the photo were: Willem de Kooning, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Hedda Sterne, Richard Pousette-Dart, William Baziotes, Jackson Pollock, Clyfford Still, Robert Motherwell, Bradley Walker Tomlin, Theodoros Stamos, Jimmy Ernst, Barnett Newman, James Brooks and Mark Rothko. The photo and article on the "Irascibles" was published in the Jan. 15, 1951 Issue of LIFE.
The simple answer might be that the Cedar was the closest bar to Robert Motherwell's studio and the drinks were cheap. Motherwell is an important figure in this drama and his writings and interviews shed light on the above questions (note: he was 25 when he moved to NYC). But before I go any further, what conceptions do you have about these artists? Are they stereotypical? Were these guys all drunken antisocial pain-in-the-ass egotists? Let's take Robert Motherwell for example.
Motherwell attend Stanford, got his Ph.D. in philosophy at Harvard, and also studied at Columbia where he was encouraged to pursue painting. This guy was smart and articulate. He later was influenced by Roberto Matta and the surrealist's desire to tap into the unconscious mind for inspiration – creating a new aesthetic based on automatism "automatic drawing" or free association.
Motherwell presents the situation in the early years, "what I realized was that Americans potentially could paint like angels but that there was no creative principle around, so that everybody who liked modern art was copying it. Gorky was copying Picasso. Pollock was copying Picasso. de Kooning was copying Picasso. I mean I say this unqualifiedly. I was painting French intimate pictures or whatever. And all we needed was a creative principle, I mean something that would mobilize this capacity to paint in a creative way, and that's what Europe had that we hadn't had; we had always followed in their wake. And I thought of all the possibilities of free association—because I also had a psychoanalytic background and I understood the implications—might be the best chance to really make something entirely new which everybody agreed was the thing to do."
Here's the part that gets interesting. Motherwell speaks about the possible genesis of the New York School, "Matta wanted to start a revolution, a movement, within Surrealism. He asked me to find some other American artists that would help start a new movement. It was then that Baziotes and I went to see Pollock and de Kooning and Hofmann and Kamrowski and Busa and several other people. And if we could come with something. Peggy Guggenheim who liked us said that she would put on a show of this new business. And so I went around explaining the theory of automatism to everybody because the only way that you could have a movement was that it had some common principle. It sort of all began that way."
What was the "creative principle" that united these very diverse painters? I believe it was the recognition of a mystical spiritual reality which was they deemed valuable and accessible. So valuable that they wanted to reflect it in new ways. Now, they may have spoken about it in different terms and the form of expression it manifested was unique to the individual. My guess is that they probably didn't quite understand it but they felt it. Could it be that they were arguing about a single reality? And, their conceptual framework was fractionated or compartmentalized resulting in a conflict of how the parts fit together? They did have differing points of view! Ultimately, they knew they were all part of a new awakening – where metaphorically, paint could be endowed with meaning. The creative principle (in my mind) was that material things are symbolic of invisible realities. These realities can be felt emotionally, meditated upon, and inspire rational thought.
Sidebar: Let's not forget a practical aspect of this togetherness – Peggy Guggenheim was going to give them a show. Money and fame can also be a powerful stimulus! Now, back to our more important theme of abstraction and meaning.
Motherwell provides us with insight in to this concept, "... it became very clear to me that what structure is the relations among the elements and that elements related are meaningful. Which is to say that abstract structures can be meaningful. And for most artists without such an intellectual background in those days they were very dubious about making abstractions just for fear that they really didn't mean anything. But I knew metaphysically that by nature they meant something, so that I never had the inhibition about. I mean where most artists of my generation are older it was a moral crisis to move from figure drawing and all the things that one had started into abstraction. But I took to it like a duck to water."
Note: there were opposing views to Motherwell's that I can't fit into this post.
So let's get back to my imaginary argument. Jackson Pollack was recounting the important abstract painters and he left de Kooning off the list. When asked why, Pollack referred to de Kooning as a "French" painter. This sounds like a derogatory comment but it may not be. It must be remembered that these guys were competitors – e.g. when hearing of Pollack's death, de Kooning said, "it's over, I'm number one." What Pollack may have meant by "French" was his way of putting down de Kooning's process. While Pollack and other abstract painters were mining the depths of their inner selves, de Kooning was abstracting from a figurative/natural source – like the French impressionists. This was a philosophical point of difference of inspiration. This important distinction again is illustrated in a meeting between Pollack and Hans Hofmann. He asked Jackson, "do you work from nature?" Since there were no still lifes or models around and Jackson’s answer was, 'I am nature.' Indicating that his source was himself and not the natural world. This statement can easily be confused as an egotistical response. However, I see it as a process statement. Pollack and de Kooning may have been competitors but they were also compatriots. In may have been in the Cedar Tavern that Pollack confesses to de Kooning, "you know more, but I feel more."
Pollack, like Motherwell, was drawn to the invisible world of the self - both feelings and thought. In 1939, Pollock began visiting a Jungian analyst to treat his alcoholism, and his analyst encouraged him to create drawings. These would later feed his paintings, and they shaped Pollock's understanding of his pictures not only as outpourings of his own mind, but expressions of modern society.
Well have I completely bored you? I don't know how to end this post. I can tell you that the "creative principle" is alive in my work. The possible difference between the so called New York School and myself is that I believe what generates the emotional and meaningful response is the soul's metaphorical recognition of the attributes of God in art and nature. Process doesn't matter – it's a distinction not worthy of argument.
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