Unintended consequences

In the discussion about artists' intentions and their relevance to the judgements we make, the story of the Abstract Expressionists is sobering.

During the 1930s, artists like Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko were involved in supporting the USA's recovery from the Depression. They were politically active, being committed socialists, and worked on developing art which conveyed real, lived experience. Art historians called their style Social Realism.

Going West

Jackson Pollock

1935

Untitled (Subway)

Mark Rothko

1937

To their disappointment, America's political climate turned towards nationalism and they began to feel their art was being exploited by others for political purposes. To make matters worse, they were aware that in the Soviet Union (supposed Utopia of many socialists) things were no better. State art had eclipsed the avant-garde and progressive voices amongst Russian artists.

They were also disenchanted by the way their work was ignored and sidelined by critics and the art establishment. Together with artists like William de Kooning, Barnett Newman and Arshile Gorky they protested that the art prescribed and promoted by academic institutions was not art at all. They despised the way in which capitalism took works of art and grossly inflated prices until it was out of the reach of ordinary people.

And so, they set about creating art which could not be exploited, neither politically nor commercially. Pollock began laying his canvases on the floor and flinging paint at them. Rothko also abandoned figures and built up fields of colours on his work. Their intention was to produce work which no government could hijack; that would so confuse the art market that it would never be commercialised.

No 46 (Black, Ochre, Red over Red)

Mark Rothko

1957

Convergence

Jackson Pollock

1952

Two significant things happened.

Critics named these works collectively as Abstract Expressionism. One critic in particular, Clement Greenburg, began to write about these artists' work claiming that they were leading the world in 'advanced art'. They began to fetch enormous prices in the New York art market and beyond.

Then in 1958, the International Programme of the Museum of Modern Art in New York took its exhibition The New American Painting on tour to eight European capitals. It included many if not most of the Abstract Expressionist artists. Years later, it was revealed that the tour had actually been financed by the CIA since they believed that this art would have a destabilising effect on Soviet artists: they would see the complete freedom enjoyed by American artists and compare it unfavourably with their own.

Both of the ambitions and intentions of the artists - to be free of commercialisation and political exploitation - had come to nothing.