Densely spaced lines and splatters in black, white, pale salmon pink, teal, and steel gray crisscross a rectangular cream-colored canvas in this abstract horizontal painting. The lines move in every direction. Most are straight but some curve slightly. The density eases a bit near the edges. Two sets of ghostly white handprints are visible at the upper corners. The artist signed and dated the painting in black paint in the lower left corner: “Jackson Pollock ’50.”
Jackson Pollock, Number 1, 1950 (Lavender Mist), 1950, oil, enamel, and aluminum on canvas, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund, 1976.37.1

Abstract Expressionism

The American painters known as abstract expressionists developed a new kind of painting during the 1940s and ’50s. Their works were characterized by abstract imagery and subject matter that was full of allusions. They created dramatic, often monumental compositions with sweeping brushwork and fields of color. 

  • Thickly painted, rectangular vertical and horizontal slabs in intense buttercup and mango yellow, shamrock and lime green, burnt orange, raspberry pink, and charcoal gray are layered in this nearly square, abstract composition. In the top half, shapes are smaller, closer together, and separated by strokes of moss green. In the bottom half, the shapes are larger and seem to float against a vivid orange background. Smaller swipes and dabs of cotton candy pink, plum purple, indigo blue, sea glass green, scarlet red, rust brown, and bright white are interspersed around the slabs. The artist signed and dated the painting in green paint in the lower right corner, “hans hofmann 57.”
  • Scrawled and energetic lines and color are spaced across a scarlet-red background in this horizontal, abstract painting. Textured brushstrokes are visible throughout. From left to right across the top half of the composition are patches of smoke gray, traffic-cone orange, emerald green, and violet purple. An ultramarine and cobalt-blue patch is near the bottom left corner, and smudges of orange and vivid yellow are along the edge at the center and near the bottom right corner of the painting. Curving black lines slice and backtrack around the bottom right quadrant of the composition, and more black encloses or crosses some of the patches of color. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right corner, “Hartigan 58.”
  • Slivers drawn in black chalk, painted with vibrant green, yellow, and red, or left white are interwoven in this square, abstract composition. The painted areas are too small to make out any objects, and the drawn areas are rounded or angular shapes. The overall impression is that shards from a painting, drawing, or blank canvas have been reassembled like bits of broken mirror. The artist signed and dated the lower center, “Lee Krasner ’76.”
  • Densely spaced lines and splatters in black, white, pale salmon pink, teal, and steel gray crisscross a rectangular cream-colored canvas in this abstract horizontal painting. The lines move in every direction. Most are straight but some curve slightly. The density eases a bit near the edges. Two sets of ghostly white handprints are visible at the upper corners. The artist signed and dated the painting in black paint in the lower left corner: “Jackson Pollock ’50.”
  • Abstracted forms are painted in grass green, black, pepper red, butter yellow, tawny beige, rose pink, and a few touches of ocean blue in this horizontal composition. The paint is applied thinly, almost like watercolor wash. Translucent layers of paint drip down the canvas and knit the colors and shapes together. Most of the forms create a roughly pyramidal shape at the center. Some are vaguely square-shaped while others are oval, circular, or triangular. Many of the forms are outlined in black, and some have spots of color at their centers. For instance, a cluster of shapes near the lower right includes two canted parallelograms outlined with black. One has an emerald-green oval at its center and the other a black oval. Other shapes in that area include a rust-red triangle, a solid black anvil-shaped form, and a butternut-orange circle surrounded by vibrant yellow. A caramel-brown area spans the bottom edge of the canvas. The artist signed and dated the lower left corner, “A. Gorky 44.”
  • Layers of rust-red and bronze-brown, textured paint cover this vertical, abstract canvas. The layers give way to a patch of scarlet-red streaks near the top left corner. A red vein drifts about three-quarters of the way down the canvas. A narrow swipe canary-yellow lines the upper edge of the painting above the red streaks, which are about a quarter of the way across from the left edge. A few minuscule spots of lapis-blue nearly go unnoticed along the right edge of the canvas near the bottom right corner. The artist signed the painting in the lower left corner, “Clyfford.”
  • Two black, abstract shapes against a white background dominate this wide, horizontal painting. One column-like, black shape is to our left, about a quarter of the way in from the left edge of the canvas. The bottom edge of the black form is jagged and an irregular bump protrudes at the center of the right side of that shape. The other black form fills most of the right half of the composition. That shape is made of two forms resembling very fat Ps with spines that curve around the protruding bumps, to our right. There are small spatters and dribbles of black paint around some of the shapes that only could have been made by striking the canvas with some force. The white background is outlined near the inner edges of the canvas, creating a subtle frame that contains the massive black shapes. Vertical lines, most of them smudged or faint, create vertical sections across the composition. A blurred, steel-blue line appears in the left most column. Thin washes of smoky blue and rose pink spread in areas across the composition. The artist signed and dated the painting in the lower right, “R. Motherwell 1978.”

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A black and white photograph shows a man with greyish hair standing against a wall of stacked cubes of wood in different shades. He is shown from the waist up. He is turned to the right and looks to the left. He rests his left hand on his waist, with his elbow bent. He has a serious expression.

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Shown from the knees up, a woman stands facing and looking at us with her head tilted a little to our left in this vertical portrait painting. She has pale skin, a heart-shaped face with rosy cheeks, and a rose-pink bow mouth. Thin, arched, sable-brown eyebrows frame her gray eyes. A wreath of pale pink flowers and curling white ostrich feathers crowns her long gray hair, which is piled high on her head. Loose curly tendrils brush both shoulders. Her glowing, silver satin gown is trimmed with delicate sheer lace around the wide, plunging neckline and sleeves, and has a pink sash around her narrow waist. Pearl bracelets adorn her wrists. She leans to her left, our right, to rest her left elbow against a waist-high, cinnamon-brown stone pedestal, which is decorated with a bronze-colored garland and bow on the side facing us. A ring of blue, yellow, red, and pink flowers, woven with strands of ivy, dangles in the hand resting on the pedestal. Her right hand hangs loosely by her side. Along the left edge of the dimly lit background, a tree with a thick trunk angles into the upper left corner. A smaller sapling grows just in front of it. On the right, bushes with olive and fern-green leaves dotted with lilac-purple flecks rise above the pedestal. Dark clouds fill most of the top third of the canvas but they part around her head to reveal the soft blue sky. The artist signed and dated the work in white in the lower right corner, “L. Vigée Le Brun 1782.”

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This square portrait shows the head and shoulders of a young woman in front of a spiky bush that fills much of the background except for a landscape view that extends into the deep distance to our right. The woman's body is angled to our right but her face turns to us. She has chalk-white, smooth skin with heavily lidded, light brown eyes, and her pale pink lips are closed. Pale blush highlights her cheeks, and she looks either at us or very slightly away from our eyes. Her brown hair is parted down the middle and pulled back, but tight, lively curls frame her face. Her hair turns gold where the light shines on it. She wears a brown dress, trimmed along the square neckline with gold. The front of the bodice is tied with a blue ribbon, and the lacing holes are also edged with gold. A sheer white veil covers her chest and is pinned at the center with a small gold ball. The bush fills the space around her head with copper-brown, spiky leaves. A river winds between trees and rolling hills in the distance to our right. Trees and a town along the horizon, which comes about halfway up the painting, is pale blue under an ice-blue sky.

Painting

Since ancient times, artists have made paintings to tell stories or capture beauty. They’ve used egg tempera, oil, and more recently acrylic to create compositions of all shapes and sizes. The results include radiant altarpieces, striking portraits, luminous landscapes, and abstract expressions.

Blue

Artists turn to the color blue to conjure depth, mood, and atmosphere. It recalls both the sky and the sea. But blue pigment was sometimes costly. Ultramarine blue was made from lapis lazuli, a semiprecious stone mined in what is now Afghanistan. For centuries of Western art, it was reserved solely for painting the Virgin Mary’s cloak.