American Abstraction

The narrator of American Abstraction claims that art in the United States always considered itself dependent on European art, particularly when it sustained the shock of modern art arriving from Europe in 1913 to be presented at the Armory Show. American painters tried to adapt these new forms to their own outlook on life, but their art was no more than adaptation. Certain painters looked elsewhere: for example, Arshile Gorky found inspiration in the mythology of his homeland, Armenia, and Mark Tobey painted works of meditation influenced by oriental thought. Little by little the physical element, the 'action,' in abstract American painting gave way to the 'sign,' in painters such as Gottlieb and Newman. This evolution transformed the spontaneous gesture we find in Pollock into a cultural gesture, a vocabulary. One painter who stands out from these trends is Mark Rothko. In his paintings there is no culture, no sign, no gesture, just color and light. The film also features the work of Rivera, Thomas Hart Benton, Orozco, Stuart Davis, Motherwell, De Kooning, Franz Kline and others.

Part of the series The Adventure of Modern Art