Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning (April 24, 1904 – March 19, 1997) was an abstract expressionist artist, born in Rotterdam, the Netherlands.

In 1938, probably under the influence of Gorky, De Kooning embarked on a series of male figures, including Two Men Standing, Man, and Seated Figure (Classic Male), while simultaneously embarking on a more purist series of lyrically colored abstractions, such as Pink Landscape and Elegy. As his work progressed, the heightened colors and elegant lines of the abstractions began to creep into the more figurative works, and the coincidence of figures and abstractions continued well into the 1940s. This period includes the representational but somewhat geometricized Woman and Standing Man, along with numerous untitled abstractions whose biomorphic forms increasingly suggest the presence of figures. By about 1945 the two tendencies seemed to fuse perfectly in Pink Angels.

In 1938, De Kooning met Elaine Marie Fried, later known as Elaine de Kooning, whom he married in 1943. She also became a significant artist. During the 1940s and thereafter, he became increasingly identified with the Abstract Expressionist movement and was recognized as one of its leaders in the mid-1950s.



“The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.”

— Willem de Kooning


During this period he also created other paintings of women. These works were shown at the Sidney Janis Gallery in 1953 and caused a sensation, chiefly because they were figurative when most of his fellow Abstract Expressionists were painting abstractly and because of their blatant technique and imagery. The appearance of aggressive brushwork and the use of high-key colors combine to reveal a woman all too congruent with some of modern man's most widely held sexual fears. The toothy snarls, overripe, pendulous breasts, vacuous eyes, and blasted extremities imaged the darkest Freudian insights. Some of these paintings also seemed to hearken back to early Mesopotamian / Akkadian works, with the large, almost "all-seeing" eyes.

这里的西方美术史主要是西方造型艺术史（包括绘画、雕刻和建筑等）.

史前美术

又称“原始美术”，西方人最早的美术作品产生于旧石器时代晚期，即距今3万到1万多年之间。最杰出的原始绘画作品，发现于法国南部和西班牙北部地区的几十处洞窟中，其中最著名的是法国的拉斯科洞窟壁画和西班牙的阿尔塔米拉洞窟壁画。所绘形象皆为动物，手法写实，形象生动。迄今为止发现的原始雕刻大多为小型动物雕刻，少数人像雕刻中，裸体女性雕像占主要地位，这些女性雕像夸张女性的生理特点，突出表现女性的乳房、臀部、腹部、大腿等，体现出原始人对于母性和生殖的崇拜意识。在奥地利维也纳附近的维伦多夫出土的女性雕像被称为“维伦多夫的维纳斯”，是其中最著名的代表作。

古代美术

西方习惯把新石器末期到中世纪称为古代，具体来说就是指公元前4000年（文字的出现）到公元476年（西罗马帝国灭亡）。 主要包括美索不达米亚、埃及、希腊和罗马时期的美术。
美索不达米亚（即幼发拉底河和底格里斯河之间的地区，又称两河流域）的雕塑，如巴比伦王国的“汉漠拉比法典”浮雕，亚述王国那些表现战争和狩猎的紧张场面、手法极为写实、充满激烈动势的浮雕。

古埃及的庞大金字塔建筑，按照正面律程式雕刻的人像雕刻和神秘威严的狮身人面像。
古希腊的自由民主创造了具有民主思想的建筑、雕刻和绘画作品，其中留存于世的不少健美而优雅的雕刻形象，如《掷铁饼者》、《米洛斯的维纳斯》等，尤其具有无穷的魅力。
古罗马美术承继着古希腊的传统，但罗马人的美术更倾向于实用主义。规模巨大的科洛西姆竞技场和万神庙是古罗马建筑的杰出代表。而曾被维苏威火山灰掩埋达1700多年的庞贝壁画，则给我们展示了古罗马绘画的独特面貌。

中世纪美术

中世纪是指公元5世纪（以公元476西罗马帝国崩溃作为标志）到15世纪（意大利文艺复兴的黎明），它标志着西方进入了基督教时代。受基督教制约，中世纪美术不注重客观世界的真实描写，而强调所谓精神世界的表现。建筑的高度发展是中世纪美术最伟大的成就。拜占廷教堂、罗马式教堂和哥特式教堂，各具艺术上的创造性。与宗教建筑相结合，雕刻、镶嵌画和壁画也取得了一定成就。

文艺复兴美术

14-16世纪的欧洲文艺复兴美术以坚持现实主义方法和体现人文主义思想为宗旨，在追溯古希腊古罗马艺术精神的旗帜下，创造了最符合现实人性的崭新艺术。

意大利的达·芬奇、米开朗基罗和拉斐尔是文艺复兴美术的三位代表。达·芬奇既是艺术家又是科学家，其杰作《最后的晚餐》、《蒙娜丽莎》等皆被誉为世界名画之首。米开朗基罗则在雕刻、绘画和建筑各方面都留下了最能代表鼎盛期文艺复兴艺术水平的典范之作。他塑造的人物形象，雄伟健壮，气魄浑宏。拉斐尔则以其塑造的秀美典雅的圣母形象最为成功。他的圣母像寓崇高于平凡，被誉为美和善的化身，最充分地体现了人文主义的理想。

17世纪美术

17世纪在欧洲出现了巴洛克美术，它发源于意大利，后风靡全欧。其特点是追求激情和运动感的表现，强调华丽绚烂的装饰性。这一风格体现在绘画、雕塑和建筑等各个美术门类中。佛兰德斯的鲁本斯是巴洛克绘画的代表人物，他的热情奔放、绚丽多彩的绘画对西方绘画具有持久的影响。同时代的现实主义大师如荷兰的伦勃朗、西班牙的迪亚哥·委拉斯盖兹等，也在一定程度上具有巴洛克的特色。

18世纪美术

18世纪罗可可风格在法国兴起，随后波及欧洲其他国家。罗可可美术的特点是追求华丽纤巧和精致。代表画家有法国的华托、布歇和弗拉戈纳尔。随着1789年法国资产阶级大革命的到来，进步的美术家们又一次重振了古希腊古罗马的英雄主义精神，开展了一场新古典主义艺术运动。其代表画家是法国的大卫和安格尔。浪漫主义随着新古典主义的衰落而兴起。法国的热里科的《梅杜萨之筏》被视为浪漫主义绘画的开山之作，而这一运动的主将却是德拉克洛瓦，其绘画色彩强烈，用笔奔放，充满强烈激情，代表作有《希阿岛的屠杀》和《自由领导着人们》等。法国吕德的《马赛曲》和卡尔波的《舞蹈》都是杰出的浪漫主义雕塑作品。

19世纪美术

19世纪中期是现实主义美术蓬勃兴旺的时期。法国画家库尔贝是现实主义的倡导者，他的代表作《奥南的葬礼》堪称绘画中的“人间喜剧”，而《石工》则深刻揭示了社会的矛盾，表现了作者对劳动人民的同情。勤劳朴实的农民画家米勒，以醇厚真挚的感情，歌颂了辛勤劳作的农民。

政治讽刺画家杜米埃创作了大量思想深刻而形象夸张的石版画和油画。德国女版画家柯勒惠支，以社会民主主义思想和鲜明的个人风格创作了反映工人运动和农民革命的系列铜版画和石版画。俄罗斯的批判现实主义产生了列宾、苏里科夫等杰出画家。法国雕塑大师罗丹的作品也具有一定的现实主义品质。

19世纪后期在法国产生了印象派。此派绘画以创新的姿态出现，它反对当时已经陈腐的古典学院派的艺术观念和法则，受到现代光学和色彩学的启示，注重在绘画中表现光的效果。代表画家有马奈、莫奈、雷诺阿、德加、毕沙罗、西斯莱等。

继印象派之后还出现了新印象派（代表画家是修拉和西涅克）和后印象派（代表画家是塞尚、凡高和高更）。而实际上后印象派与印象派在艺术主张并不相同甚至完全相反。其中凡高的绘画着力于表现自己强烈的情感，色彩明亮，线条奔放。高更的画多具有象征性的寓意和装饰性的线条和色彩。塞尚绘画则追求几何性的形体结构，他因而被尊称为“现代艺术之父”。

20世纪时期至今

20世纪以来，现代美术呈现出流派迭起，千姿百态的局面。1905年诞生的以马蒂斯为代表的野兽派绘画，强调形的单纯化和平面化，追求画面的装饰性。1908年崛起的以布拉克和毕加索为代表的立体派绘画继承了塞尚的造形法则，将自然物象分解成几何块面，从而从根本上挣脱传统绘画的视觉规律和空间概念。

随着德国1905年桥社和1909年蓝骑士社的先后成立，表现主义作为一种重要流派登上画坛，此派绘画注重表现画家的主观精神和内在情感。

1909年在意大利出现了未来主义美术运动，此派画家热衷于利用立体主义分解物体的方法表现活动的物体和运动的感觉。抽象主义的美术作品大约于1910年前后产生，其代表画家有俄罗斯画家康定斯基和荷兰画家蒙德里安，而两人又分别代表着抒情抽象和几何抽象两个方向。

第一次世界大战期间产生的达达主义思潮，此派艺术家不仅反对战争、反对权威、反对传统，而且否定艺术自身，否定一切。杜尚将达·芬奇的《蒙娜丽莎》画上胡须，并将小便池作为艺术品，便是达达主义思想的体现。

随着达达主义运动消退，在此基础上出现了超现实主义艺术思潮。此派画家以柏格森的直觉主义，弗洛伊德的精神分析学和梦幻心理学为理论基础，力图展现无意识和潜意识世界。其绘画往往把具体的细节描写与虚构的意境结合在一起，表现梦境和幻觉的景象。代表画家有恩斯特、雷内·马格利特、夏卡尔、达利、胡安·米罗等。

第二次世界大战后在美国产生的以波洛克、德·库宁为代表的抽象表现主义绘画，综合了抽象主义、表现主义的特点，强调画家行动的自由性和自动性。

20世纪50年代初萌发于英国、50年代中期鼎盛于美国的波普艺术，继承了达达主义精神，作品中大量利用废弃物、商品招贴、电影广告和各种报刊图片作拼贴组合，故又有新达达主义的称号。代表人物有美国画家约翰斯、劳生柏、安迪·沃荷等。

而70年代兴起的超级写实主义（或称照相写实主义）运动，其主要特征是利用摄影成果，进行客观的复制和逼真的描绘。代表画家有克洛斯、佩尔斯坦，雕塑家中，安德烈、汉森最为著名。除上述之外，可以归入现代艺术范畴的还有偶发艺术、大地艺术等。其许多艺术活动已经超出了美术的范围。

Mark Tobey

In 1923, Tobey met Teng Kuei, a Chinese painter and student at the University of Washington, who introduced Tobey to Eastern penmanship, beginning Tobey’s exploration of Chinese calligraphy.

In 1934, Tobey and Leach traveled together through France and Italy, then sailed from Naples to Hong Kong and Shanghai, where they parted company. Leach went on to Japan, while Tobey remained to visit Teng Kuei, his old friend from Seattle, before going on to Japan. Japanese authorities confiscated and destroyed an edition of 31 drawings on wet paper that Tobey had brought with him from England to be published in Japan. No explanation for their destruction has been recorded; possibly they considered his sketches of nude men pornographic

Helmi Juvonen, another Northwest School artist, was obsessed with Tobey. She was diagnosed as a manic depressive, and suffered the delusion that she and Tobey were man and wife, a point of misinformation which she shared with almost anyone.
Tobey's friend Elizabeth Bayley Willis showed Tobey's painting Bars and Flails to Jackson Pollock in 1944. Pollock studied the painting closely and then painted Blue Poles, a painting that made history when the Australian government bought it for $2 million. Pollock's biographers write: "...[Tobey's] dense web of white strokes, as elegant as Oriental calligraphy, impressed Jackson so much that in a letter to Louis Bunce he described Tobey, a West Coast artist, as an 'exception' to the rule that New York was 'the only real place in America where painting (in the real sense) can come thru'" (Jackson Pollock).[8] Jackson Pollock went to all of Mark Tobey's Willard Gallery shows in New York. Here, Tobey presented small to medium sized canvases, approximately 33 by 45 inches. Jackson Pollock would see them and go home and blow them up to twelve by nine feet, pouring paint onto the canvas instead of brushing it on. Pollock was never really concerned with diffused light. But he was very interested in Tobey's idea of covering the entire canvas with marks up to and including its edges. This had never been done before in American art.[9]

Tobey is most famous for his creation of so-called "white writing" - an overlay of white or light-colored calligraphic symbols on an abstract field which is often itself composed of thousands of small and interwoven brush strokes. This method, in turn, gave rise to the type of "all-over" painting style made most famous by Jackson Pollock, another American painter to whom Tobey is often compared. [10]

Tobey’s work is also defined as creating a vibratory space with the multiple degrees of mobility obtained by the Brownian movement of a light brush on a bottom with the dense tonalities. The series of “Broadway” realized at that time has a historical value of reference today. It precedes a new dimension of the pictorial vision, that of contemplation in the action.

His work is inspired by a personal belief system that suggests Oriental influences and reference to Tobey's involvement in the Bahá'í Faith. Four of Tobey's signed lithographs hang in the reception hall in the Seat of the Universal House of Justice, the supreme governing institution of the Baha’i Faith.

Mark George Tobey (December 11, 1890 – April 24, 1976) was an American abstract expressionist painter, born in Centerville, Wisconsin. Widely recognized throughout the United States and Europe, Tobey is the most noted among the "mystical painters of the Northwest." Senior in age and experience, Tobey had a strong influence on the others. Friend and mentor, Tobey shared their interest in philosophy and Eastern religions. Along with Guy Anderson, Kenneth Callahan, Morris Graves, and William Cumming, Tobey was a founder of the Northwest School.[

Jackson Pollock

Pollock was introduced to the use of liquid paint in 1936 at an experimental workshop operated in New York City by the Mexican muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros. He later used paint pouring as one of several techniques on canvases of the early 1940s, such as "Male and Female" and "Composition with Pouring I." After his move to Springs, he began painting with his canvases laid out on the studio floor, and he developed what was later called his "drip" technique. The drip technique required paint with a fluid viscosity. Therefore, Pollock turned to synthetic resin-based paints called alkyd enamels, which, at that time, was a novel medium. Pollock described this use of household paints, instead of artist’s paints, as "a natural growth out of a need".[7] He used hardened brushes, sticks, and even basting syringes as paint applicators. Pollock's technique of pouring and dripping paint is thought to be one of the origins of the term action painting. With this technique, Pollock was able to achieve a more immediate means of creating art, the paint now literally flowing from his chosen tool onto the canvas. By defying the convention of painting on an upright surface, he added a new dimension, literally,[citation needed] by being able to view and apply paint to his canvases from all directions.
In the process of making paintings in this way, he moved away from figurative representation, and challenged the Western tradition of using easel and brush. He also moved away from the use of only the hand and wrist, since he used his whole body to paint. In 1956, Time magazine dubbed Pollock "Jack the Dripper" as a result of his unique painting style.[8]

“My painting does not come from the easel. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.”

“I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added.”

“When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.



Pollock denied "the accident"; he usually had an idea of how he wanted a particular piece to appear. His technique combined the movement of his body, over which he had control, the viscous flow of paint, the force of gravity, and the absorption of paint into the canvas. It was a mixture of controllable and uncontrollable factors. Flinging, dripping, pouring, and spattering, he would move energetically around the canvas, almost as if in a dance, and would not stop until he saw what he wanted to see.
Studies by Taylor, Micolich and Jonas have examined Pollock's technique and have determined that some works display the properties of mathematical fractals.[9] They assert that the works become more fractal-like chronologically through Pollock's career.[10] The authors even speculate that Pollock may have had an intuition of the nature of chaotic motion, and attempted to form a representation of mathematical chaos, more than ten years before "Chaos Theory" itself was proposed. Other experts[11] suggest that Pollock may have merely imitated popular theories of the time in order to give his paintings a depth not previously seen.


In 1950, Hans Namuth, a young photographer, wanted to photograph and film Pollock at work. Pollock promised to start a new painting especially for the photographic session, but when Namuth arrived, Pollock apologized and told him the painting was finished. Namuth's comment upon entering the studio:

“A dripping wet canvas covered the entire floor. . . There was complete silence. . . Pollock looked at the painting. Then, unexpectedly, he picked up can and paint brush and started to move around the canvas. It was as if he suddenly realized the painting was not finished. His movements, slow at first, gradually became faster and more dance like as he flung black, white, and rust colored paint onto the canvas. He completely forgot that Lee and I were there; he did not seem to hear the click of the camera shutter. . . My photography session lasted as long as he kept painting, perhaps half an hour. In all that time, Pollock did not stop. How could one keep up this level of activity? Finally, he said 'This is it.'”

“Pollock’s finest paintings… reveal that his all-over line does not give rise to positive or negative areas: we are not made to feel that one part of the canvas demands to be read as figure, whether abstract or representational, against another part of the canvas read as ground. There is not inside or outside to Pollock’s line or the space through which it moves…. Pollock has managed to free line not only from its function of representing objects in the world, but also from its task of describing or bounding shapes or figures, whether abstract or representational, on the surface of the canvas.(Karmel 132)


Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality and struggled with alcoholism all of his life. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.

In October 1945, Pollock married another important American painter, Lee Krasner, and in November they moved to what is now known as the Pollock-Krasner House and Studio in Springs on Long Island, New York. Peggy Guggenheim loaned them the down payment for the wood-frame house with a nearby barn that Pollock made into a studio. It was there that he perfected the technique of working spontaneously with liquid paint.

Pollock wanted an end to the viewer's search for representational elements in his paintings, thus he abandoned titles and started numbering the paintings instead. Of this, Pollock commented: "...look passively and try to receive what the painting has to offer and not bring a subject matter or preconceived idea of what they are to be looking for." Pollock's wife, Lee Krasner, said Pollock "used to give his pictures conventional titles... but now he simply numbers them. Numbers are neutral. They make people look at a picture for what it is - pure painting."[7]


In a famous 1952 article in ARTnews, Harold Rosenberg coined the term "action painting," and wrote that "what was to go on the canvas was not a picture but an event. The big moment came when it was decided to paint 'just to paint.' The gesture on the canvas was a gesture of liberation from value — political, aesthetic, moral." Many people assumed that he had modeled his "action painter" paradigm on Pollock.

Clement Greenberg supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds. It fit well with Greenberg's view of art history as a progressive purification in form and elimination of historical content. He therefore saw Pollock's work as the best painting of its day and the culmination of the Western tradition going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Manet.

Others such as artist, critic, and satirist Craig Brown, have been "astonished that decorative 'wallpaper', essentially brainless, could gain such a position in art history alongside Giotto, Titian, and Velázquez."[28]
Reynold's News in a 1959 headline said, "This is not art — it's a joke in bad taste."[