Word: willems
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...other European entries shared Tapies' individualism; the vast majority looked like imitations of American abstract expression, seemed to indicate that a 'herd of mavericks is more herd than maverick. As developed by Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and half a dozen more, notably Jackson Pollock (see above), U.S. abstract expression might be compared to the hamburger and the Coke, which have also taken the world by storm. Hamburgers and Cokes are excellent in their ways, and so is abstract expression-but luckily the nation has other nourishment to offer as well...
...Energetically but less successfully, Horizon embraces such -ho-hum items as a spoof on wine snobbery, a mystique-ridden study of why men climb mountains. It also carries a long-winded sneer at the Beat Generation, including abstract expressionist painters. But in another article it acknowledges that Abstract Painter Willem de Kooning is among the nation's bestsellers...
Once the three directors were convinced of the validity of their theme, they made a careful selection of artists, visited studios, often insisted on a particular painting. They decided on two free-form spontaneous doodles by the late Jackson Pollock, violent outbursts of vivid colors by Willem de Kooning, a melancholic mood piece by Grace Hartigan, harshly contrasting patterns by Richard Pousette-Dart. They added four morbidly humorous, squashed-face portraits by France...
Jean Dubuffet, the only Ecole de Paris painter whose painting philosophy they felt matched their own. Their final choices ranged from Elaine de Kooning's near realistic portrait of husband Willem to the abstract Black Forms by East Hampton's John Little, in which a human form can be seen with some imagination...
Nearly all the leading U.S. abstract expressionists painted realistically before they turned to abstraction. Nine of them got through the 1930s painting government murals. "The most important thing for all of us was the WPA," says Willem de Kooning, recognized leader of the movement since the death of 44-year-old Jackson Pollock in an auto accident in 1956. The WPA was important in more than one way. It enabled the larval abstractionists to live by painting, established them as professionals and helped to produce the reaction that turned them to, abstraction in the 1940s...