Abstraction: The Experience

Artists, like everyone else in Europe, had lived through traumatic experiences by the time the Germans surrendered in 1945. In France, artists such as Wols and Jean Fautrier were trying to hold on to the pre-war Abstraction movement. Wols showed his life of misery in troubled but spontaneous works: his first oil paintings were once described as 'forty moments in the crucifixion of man.' Jean Fautrier revealed a similar experience in his paintings of hostages. Then came the Lyric Abstraction painters, Georges Mathieu, Pierre Soulages, Serge Poliakoff, Hans Hartung. The abstract expression of this period conveys an effort to escape from a world confronted with the problem of having to rebuild itself. This attempt to escape very often resulted in dilemma: for example, Nicholas de Staël committed suicide in 1951. Each artist struggled to find his own way: Lucio Fontana in Italy, Antoni Tàpies in Spain, Jean Dubuffet in France.

In the United States, the revolution caused by the paintings of Pollock and De Kooning led to a new humanism, as expressed in the paintings of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman. From this point onward, American Abstraction evolved progressively toward its downfall, because of a shortage of ideas and new techniques. After Clyfford Still, Sam Francis and Morris Louis, forms and shapes were simplified, colors purified; trying to achieve detachment led to a lack of sensitivity. From Kenneth Noland to Frank Stella, painting turned to parallel lines following the edges of the canvas. It was during this period that Joseph Albers, who had previously been a professor at the Bauhaus, devoted the rest of his life to homage to the square. This asceticism reached its culmination with works such as those of Ad Reinhardt, who said, 'Art is Art. Everything else is everything else.' He painted wholly black canvases, declaring these 'the last painting anyone can hope or wish to paint.' In the meantime, Europeans were attracted to technology. Painting was becoming an attempt to recreate movement; kinetic art - kinetic from the Greek verb 'to move' - was a school led by Victor Vasarely. Forms of energy were also being used: magnetic force by Vassilakis Takis and Pol Bury, air in the case of Alexander Calder, and light in the case of Julio Le Parc. Today the desire to incorporate kinetic works into everyday life still represents the ultimate aim of the abstractional experience. The film also features the work of Bacon, Esteve, Riopelle, Piaubert, Lilyan Lijn, the GRAV group and many others.

Part of the series The Adventure of Modern Art