Style
It had been recognized that the paintings of Josef Albers, Barnett Newman, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt, Clyfford Still and Robert Motherwell were all very different yet the symbolic content was achieved "through dramatic statement of isolated and highly simplified elements." In many cases the dramatic simplification was achieved by the use of:
- geometric means: Josef Albers; Franz Kline; Hans Hofmann
- compression: Grace Hartigan; George McNeil
- intricate elaboration of canvas surfaces: Richard Pousette-Dart; Robert Richenburg; John Ferren; Jimmy Ernst;
- isolated shapes or signs: Adolph Gottlieb, Robert Motherwell
- detailed over-all patterning of the canvas: William Baziotes
- simplified structure through the dominance of the large, unified color shapes: James Brooks, Esteban Vicente, Adja Yunkers, Cameron Booth; Giorgio Cavallon
In some cases there was a "loss of the feeling and immediacy" in the work.
Read more about this topic: Abstract Imagists
Famous quotes containing the word style:
“A cultivated style would be like a mask. Everybody knows it’s a mask, and sooner or later you must show yourself—or at least, you show yourself as someone who could not afford to show himself, and so created something to hide behind.... You do not create a style. You work, and develop yourself; your style is an emanation from your own being.”
—Katherine Anne Porter (1890–1980)
“I concluded that I was skilled, however poorly, at only one thing: marriage. And so I set about the business of selling myself and two children to some unsuspecting man who might think me a desirable second-hand mate, a man of good means and disposition willing to support another man’s children in some semblance of the style to which they were accustomed. My heart was not in the chase, but I was tired and there was no alternative. I could not afford freedom.”
—Barbara Howar (b. 1934)
“The difference between style and taste is never easy to define, but style tends to be centered on the social, and taste upon the individual. Style then works along axes of similarity to identify group membership, to relate to the social order; taste works within style to differentiate and construct the individual. Style speaks about social factors such as class, age, and other more flexible, less definable social formations; taste talks of the individual inflection of the social.”
—John Fiske (b. 1939)