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132-461: Lucian Michael Freud OM CH ( / f r ɔɪ d / ; 8 December 1922 – 20 July 2011) was a British painter and draughtsman, specialising in figurative art, and is known as one of the foremost 20th-century English portraitists. He was born in Berlin , the son of Jewish architect Ernst L. Freud and the grandson of Sigmund Freud . Freud got his first name "Lucian" from his mother in memory of

264-594: A surrealist , he was also one of the first painters of the New York School who used the technique of staining. Gorky created broad fields of vivid, open, unbroken color that he used in many of his paintings as grounds. In Gorky's most effective and accomplished paintings between the years 1941–1948, he consistently used intense stained fields of color, often letting the paint run and drip, under and around his familiar lexicon of organic and biomorphic shapes and delicate lines. Another abstract expressionist whose works in

396-458: A canvas laid on the floor is a technique that has its roots in the work of André Masson , Max Ernst , and David Alfaro Siqueiros . The newer research tends to put the exile-surrealist Wolfgang Paalen in the position of the artist and theoretician who fostered the theory of the viewer-dependent possibility space through his paintings and his magazine DYN . Paalen considered ideas of quantum mechanics , as well as idiosyncratic interpretations of

528-519: A different way from gestural abstract expressionism. Although abstract expressionism spread quickly throughout the United States, the major centers of this style were New York City and California, especially in the New York School , and the San Francisco Bay area . Abstract expressionist paintings share certain characteristics, including the use of large canvases, an "all-over" approach, in which

660-536: A late member of the Uptown Group , wrote catalogue forewords and reviews, and by the late 1940s became an exhibiting artist at Betty Parsons Gallery . His first solo show was in 1948. Soon after his first exhibition, Barnett Newman remarked in one of the Artists' Sessions at Studio 35: "We are in the process of making the world, to a certain extent, in our own image." Utilizing his writing skills, Newman fought every step of

792-449: A list of "the men in the new movement". Paalen is mentioned twice; other artists mentioned are Gottlieb, Rothko, Pollock, Hofmann, Baziotes, Gorky and others. Robert Motherwell is mentioned with a question mark. Another important early manifestation of what came to be abstract expressionism is the work of American Northwest artist Mark Tobey , especially his "white writing" canvases, which, though generally not large in scale, anticipate

924-480: A merchant seaman in an Atlantic convoy in 1941 before being invalided out of the service in 1942. As a result of his poor physical condition he was able, unlike his two brothers, to avoid conscription. In 1943, the poet and editor Meary James Thurairajah Tambimuttu commissioned the young artist to illustrate a book of poems by Nicholas Moore entitled The Glass Tower . It was published the following year by Editions Poetry London and comprised, among other drawings,

1056-723: A neck ribbon (as a necklet ), while women wear theirs on a ribbon bow pinned to the left shoulder, and aides-de-camp may wear the insignia on their aiguillettes . Since 1991, the insignia must be returned upon the recipient's death. number appointment There have been no honorary members of the Order of Merit since the death of the last such member, Nelson Mandela , in December 2013. Secretary and Registrar : Robin Janvrin, Baron Janvrin GCB , GCVO , QSO , PC As

1188-560: A philosophical and a physical connection to the way the color field painters like Newman, Rothko and Still construct their unbroken and in Still's case broken surfaces. In several paintings that Pollock painted after his classic drip painting period of 1947–1950, he used the technique of staining fluid oil paint and house paint into raw canvas. During 1951 he produced a series of semi-figurative black stain paintings, and in 1952 he produced stain paintings using color. In his November 1952 exhibition at

1320-495: A private dinner. Member of the Order of Merit The Order of Merit (French: Ordre du Mérite ) is an order of merit for the Commonwealth realms , recognising distinguished service in the armed forces, science, art, literature, or the promotion of culture. Established in 1902 by Edward VII , admission into the order remains the personal gift of its Sovereign—currently Edward VII's great-great-grandson Charles III —and

1452-474: A reaction against the subjectivism of abstract expressionism, other forms of Geometric abstraction began to appear in artist studios and in radical avant-garde circles. Greenberg became the voice of Post-painterly abstraction; by curating an influential exhibition of new painting that toured important art museums throughout the United States in 1964. Color field painting , Hard-edge painting and Lyrical Abstraction emerged as radical new directions. Since

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1584-517: A stuffed zebra and a palm tree. Both subjects reappeared in The Painter's Room on display at Freud's first solo exhibition in 1944 at the Lefevre Gallery . In the summer of 1946, he travelled to Paris before continuing to Greece for several months to visit John Craxton . In the early fifties he was a frequent visitor to Dublin where he would share Patrick Swift's studio. He remained a Londoner for

1716-406: A work of art was as important as the work of art itself. Like Picasso 's innovative reinventions of painting and sculpture near the turn of the century via Cubism and constructed sculpture, with influences as disparate as Navajo sand paintings , surrealism, Jungian analysis, and Mexican mural art, Pollock redefined what it was to produce art. His move away from easel painting and conventionality

1848-620: A year before being expelled owing to disruptive behaviour. Freud briefly studied at the Central School of Art in London, and from 1939 to 1942 with greater success at Cedric Morris ' East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham , relocated in 1940 to Benton End, a house near Hadleigh, Suffolk . He also attended Goldsmiths' College , part of the University of London , in 1942–43. He served as

1980-466: Is an accumulation of richly worked layers of pigment, as well as months of intense observation. Freud painted fellow artists, including Frank Auerbach and Francis Bacon and produced a large number of portraits of the performance artist Leigh Bowery . He also painted Henrietta Moraes , a muse to many Soho artists. A series of huge nude portraits from the mid-1990s depicted Sue Tilley , or "Big Sue", some using her job title of "Benefits Supervisor" in

2112-484: Is an example of a transitional work in this process, sharing many characteristics with paintings before and after it, with relatively tight brushwork and a middling size and viewpoint. He would often clean his brush after each stroke when painting flesh, so that the colour remained constantly variable. He also started to paint standing up, which continued until old age, when he switched to a high chair. The colours of non-flesh areas in these paintings are typically muted, while

2244-458: Is closely associated with Action Painting because of his style, technique, and his painterly touch and his physical application of paint, art critics have likened Pollock to both Action painting and color field painting. Another critical view advanced by Greenberg connects Pollock's allover canvasses to the large-scale Water Lilies of Claude Monet done during the 1920s. Art critics such as Michael Fried , Greenberg and others have observed that

2376-566: Is difficult to explain or interpret because it is a supposed unconscious manifestation of the act of pure creation. In practice, the term abstract expressionism is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even applied to work which is not especially abstract nor expressionist. Pollock's energetic action paintings , with their "busy" feel, are different both technically and aesthetically, to De Kooning's violent and grotesque Women series. Woman V

2508-591: Is in the collection of MoMA , used greatly reduced references to nature, and they painted with a highly articulated and psychological use of color. In general, these artists eliminated recognizable imagery, in the case of Rothko and Gottlieb sometimes using symbols and signs as a replacement of imagery. Certain artists quoted references to past or present art, but in general color field painting presents abstraction as an end in itself. In pursuing this direction of modern art , artists wanted to present each painting as one unified, cohesive, monolithic image. In distinction to

2640-466: Is one of a series of six paintings made by de Kooning between 1950 and 1953 that depict a three-quarter-length female figure. He began the first of these paintings, Woman I , in June 1950, repeatedly changing and painting out the image until January or February 1952, when the painting was abandoned unfinished. The art historian Meyer Schapiro saw the painting in de Kooning's studio soon afterwards and encouraged

2772-568: Is one of the originators of the Color Field movement that emerged in the late 1950s. Frankenthaler also studied with Hans Hofmann . Hofmann's paintings are a symphony of color as seen in The Gate, 1959–1960. He was renowned not only as an artist but also as a teacher of art, both in his native Germany and later in the US. Hofmann, who came to the United States from Germany in the early 1930s, brought with him

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2904-570: Is restricted to a maximum of 24 living recipients from the Commonwealth realms, plus honorary members. While all members are awarded the right to use the post-nominal letters OM and wear the badge of the order, the Order of Merit's precedence among other honours differs between countries. In around 1773, George III considered establishing an order of knighthood to be called the "Order of Minerva " with membership restricted to 24 distinguished artists and authors. Knights would be entitled to

3036-639: Is widespread, and often he features a pet and its owner. Other examples of portraits with both animals and people in Freud's work include Guy and Speck (1980–81), Eli and David (2005–06) and Double Portrait (1985–86). He had a special passion for horses, having enjoyed riding at school in Dartington, where he sometimes slept in the stables. His portraits solely of horses include Grey Gelding (2003), Skewbald Mare (2004), and Mare Eating Hay (2006). Wilting houseplants feature prominently in some portraits, especially in

3168-595: The "all-over" look of Pollock's drip paintings. The movement's name is derived from the combination of the emotional intensity and self-denial of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European abstract schools such as Futurism , the Bauhaus , and Synthetic Cubism . Additionally, it has an image of being rebellious, anarchic, highly idiosyncratic and, some feel, nihilistic. In practice,

3300-878: The Charles Egan Gallery , the Sidney Janis Gallery , the Betty Parsons Gallery , the Kootz Gallery , the Tibor de Nagy Gallery , the Stable Gallery , the Leo Castelli Gallery as well as others; and several downtown galleries known at the time as the Tenth Street galleries exhibited many emerging younger artists working in the abstract expressionist vein. Action painting was a style widespread from

3432-609: The Dominions of the British Empire became independent countries within the empire, equal in status to the UK, the Order of Merit continued as an honour open to all these realms and, in many, became a part of their newly developing national honours systems. The order's statutes were amended in 1935 to include members of the Royal Air Force and, in 1969, the definition of honorary recipients

3564-472: The Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia , stated that the Order of Merit was the highest civilian award for merit a Canadian could receive. Some orders of precedence are as follows: Order of wear Abstract expressionism The movement was not limited to painting but included influential collagists and sculptors, such as David Smith , Louise Nevelson , and others. Abstract Expressionism

3696-520: The Museum für Moderne Kunst Frankfurt was able to show 50 paintings, drawings and etchings from the late 1940s to 2000 in a larger overview exhibition despite the artist's considerable resentment towards Germany. All print media bore the motif of Freud's outstanding painting Sleeping by the Lion Carpet (1995-1996) depicting the nude Sue Tilley. In addition to some of his most important nude portraits of women,

3828-570: The Ninth Street Show , a famous exhibition curated by Leo Castelli on East Ninth Street in New York City in 1951. Besides the painters and sculptors of the period the New York School of abstract expressionism also generated a number of supportive poets, including Frank O'Hara and photographers such as Aaron Siskind and Fred McDarrah , (whose book The Artist's World in Pictures documented

3960-527: The Royal Academy of Arts , advised against the new order, primarily because of its selection process. It was Victoria's son Edward VII who eventually founded the Order of Merit on 26 June 1902 (the date for which his coronation had been originally scheduled ) as a means to acknowledge "exceptionally meritorious service in Our Navy and Our Army, or who may have rendered exceptionally meritorious service towards

4092-540: The Sidney Janis Gallery in New York City Pollock showed Number 12, 1952 , a large, masterful stain painting that resembles a brightly colored stained landscape (with an overlay of broadly dripped dark paint); the painting was acquired from the exhibition by Nelson Rockefeller for his personal collection. While Arshile Gorky is considered to be one of the founding fathers of abstract expressionism and

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4224-419: The 1930s and 1940s. In 1953 Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland were both profoundly influenced by Helen Frankenthaler 's stain paintings after visiting her studio in New York City. Returning to Washington, DC., they began to produce the major works that created the color field movement in the late 1950s. In 1972 then Metropolitan Museum of Art curator Henry Geldzahler said: Clement Greenberg included

4356-490: The 1940s call to mind the stain paintings of the 1960s and the 1970s is James Brooks . Brooks regularly used stain as a technique in his paintings from the late 1940s. Brooks began diluting his oil paint in order to have fluid colors with which to pour and drip and stain into the mostly raw canvas that he used. These works often combined calligraphy and abstract shapes. During the final three decades of his career, Sam Francis ' style of large-scale bright abstract expressionism

4488-570: The 1940s until the early 1960s, and is closely associated with abstract expressionism (some critics have used the terms action painting and abstract expressionism interchangeably). A comparison is often drawn between the American action painting and the French tachisme . The term was coined by the American critic Harold Rosenberg in 1952 and signaled a major shift in the aesthetic perspective of New York School painters and critics. According to Rosenberg

4620-408: The 1950s, he began to focus on portraiture, often nudes (though his first full-length nude was not painted until 1966), to the almost complete exclusion of everything else, and by the middle of the decade developed a much more free style using large hog's-hair brushes, concentrating on the texture and colour of flesh, and much thicker paint, including impasto . Girl with a White Dog , 1951–1952, (Tate)

4752-457: The 1960s, and Freud also produced a number of paintings purely of plants. Other regular features included mattresses in earlier works, and huge piles of the linen rags with which he used to clean his brushes in later ones. Some portraits, especially in the 1980s, have very carefully painted views of London roofscapes seen through the studio windows. Freud's subjects, who needed to make a very large and uncertain commitment of their time, were often

4884-660: The Abbot Hall Art Gallery in Kendal mounted a major exhibition of 27 paintings and thirteen etchings, covering Freud's output to date. The following year the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art presented "Lucian Freud: Early Works". The exhibition comprised around 30 drawings and paintings done between 1940 and 1945. In 1997 Freud received the Rubens Prize of the city of Siegen. From September 2000 to March 2001,

5016-710: The Admiralty Charles Middleton, 1st Baron Barham and William Pitt exchanged correspondence concerning the possible creation of an order of merit, though nothing came of the idea. Later, Queen Victoria , her courtiers , and politicians alike, thought that a new order, based on the Prussian order Pour le Mérite , would make up for the insufficient recognition offered by the established honours system to achievement outside public service, in fields such as art, music, literature, industry and science. Victoria's husband, Albert, Prince Consort , took an interest in

5148-605: The CIA's International Organizations Division (IOD) and ex-executive secretary of the Museum of Modern Art said in an interview, "I think it was the most important division that the agency had, and I think that it played an enormous role in the Cold War." Against this revisionist tradition, an essay by Michael Kimmelman , chief art critic of The New York Times , called Revisiting the Revisionists: The Modern, Its Critics and

5280-486: The Cold War , asserts that much of that information concerning what was happening on the American art scene during the 1940s and 50s, as well as the revisionists' interpretation of it, is false or decontextualized. Other books on the subject include Art in the Cold War , by Christine Lindey, which also describes the art of the Soviet Union at the same time, and Pollock and After , edited by Francis Frascina, which reprinted

5412-584: The Kimmelman article. Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle (1923–2002), a member of the Montreal-based surrealist-inspired group Les Automatistes , helped introduce a related style of abstract impressionism to the Parisian art world from 1949. Michel Tapié 's groundbreaking book, Un Art Autre (1952), was also enormously influential in this regard. Tapié was also a curator and exhibition organizer who promoted

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5544-462: The New York avant-garde was still relatively unknown by the late 1940s, most of the artists who have become household names today had their well-established patron critics: Clement Greenberg advocated Jackson Pollock and the color field painters like Clyfford Still , Mark Rothko , Barnett Newman , Adolph Gottlieb and Hans Hofmann ; Harold Rosenberg seemed to prefer the action painters such as Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline , as well as

5676-465: The New York School during the 1950s), and filmmakers—notably Robert Frank —as well. Although the abstract expressionist school spread quickly throughout the United States, the epicenters of this style were New York City and the San Francisco Bay area of California . At a certain moment the canvas began to appear to one American painter after another as an arena in which to act. What was to go on

5808-577: The Order of Merit is open to the citizens of 15 countries, each with their own system of orders, decorations, and medals, the order's place of precedence varies from country to country. While, in the United Kingdom, the order's postnominal letters follow those of Knights and Dames Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath , membership in the Order of Merit itself gives members no place in any of the orders of precedence in

5940-425: The Order of Merit, members are entitled to use the post-nominal letters OM and are entrusted with the badge of the order. The insignia consists of a badge, which consists of a golden crown from which is suspended a red enamelled cross pattée , itself centred by a disk of blue enamel, surrounded by a laurel wreath . The obverse of the badge's central disk bears the words FOR MERIT in gold lettering, while

6072-510: The Order, having been admitted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1968, when he was 47 years old. Robin Eames , Baron Eames represented the order at the coronation of Charles III and Camilla on 6 May 2023. All citizens of the Commonwealth realms are eligible for appointment to the Order of Merit. There may be, however, only 24 living individuals in the order at any given time, not including honorary appointees, and new members are personally selected by

6204-541: The U.S. and Europe, including Tachisme and Neo-expressionism , among others. The term " abstract expressionism " is believed to have first been used in Germany in 1919 in the magazine Der Sturm in reference to German Expressionism. Alfred Barr used this term in 1929 to describe works by Wassily Kandinsky . Technically, an important predecessor is Surrealism , with its emphasis on spontaneous, automatic , or subconscious creation. Jackson Pollock 's dripping paint onto

6336-520: The US formed a bridge between abstract expressionism and Pop art. Minimalism was exemplified by artists such as Donald Judd , Robert Mangold and Agnes Martin . However, many painters, such as Jules Olitski , Joan Mitchell and Antoni Tàpies continued to work in the abstract expressionist style for many years, extending and expanding its visual and philosophical implications, as many abstract artists continue to do today, in styles described as Lyrical Abstraction , Neo-expressionist and others. In

6468-506: The United Kingdom . However, Stanley Martin says in his book The Order of Merit 1902–2002: One Hundred Years of Matchless Honour , that the Order of Merit is the pinnacle of the British honours system. Similarly, though it was not listed in the Canadian order of precedence for honours, decorations, and medals until December 2010, Christopher McCreery, an expert on Canadian honours and secretary to

6600-703: The World of Arts and Letters , (published in the UK as Who Paid the Piper?: CIA and the Cultural Cold War ) details how the CIA financed and organized the promotion of American abstract expressionists as part of cultural imperialism via the Congress for Cultural Freedom from 1950 to 1967. Notably Robert Motherwell's series Elegy to the Spanish Republic addressed some of those political issues. Tom Braden , founding chief of

6732-552: The advancement of Art, Literature and Science". All modern aspects of the order were established under his direction, including the division for military figures. From the outset, prime ministers attempted to propose candidates or lobbied to influence the monarch's decision on appointments. But, the Royal Household adamantly guarded information about potential names. After 1931, when the Statute of Westminster came into effect and

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6864-521: The ancient writer Lucian of Samosata . His family moved to England in 1933, when he was 10 years old, to escape the rise of Nazism . He became a British naturalized citizen in 1939. From 1942 to 1943 he attended Goldsmiths' College , London . He served at sea with the British Merchant Navy during the Second World War . His early career as a painter was influenced by surrealism , but by

6996-469: The art was political, the message was largely for the insiders. While the movement is closely associated with painting, collagist Anne Ryan and certain sculptors in particular were also integral to abstract expressionism. David Smith , and his wife Dorothy Dehner , Herbert Ferber , Isamu Noguchi , Ibram Lassaw , Theodore Roszak , Phillip Pavia , Mary Callery , Richard Stankiewicz, Louise Bourgeois , and Louise Nevelson in particular were some of

7128-424: The artist to persist. De Kooning's response was to begin three other paintings on the same theme; Woman II , Woman III and Woman IV . During the summer of 1952, spent at East Hampton , de Kooning further explored the theme through drawings and pastels. He may have finished work on Woman I by the end of June, or possibly as late as November 1952, and probably the other three women pictures were concluded at much

7260-424: The background of the portrait. Ria, Naked Portrait 2007 , a nude completed in 2007, required sixteen months of work, with the model, Ria Kirby, posing all but four evenings during that time. With each session averaging five hours, the painting took approximately 2,400 hours to complete. A rapport with his models was necessary, and while at work, Freud was characterised as "an outstanding raconteur and mimic". Regarding

7392-495: The by then long-widowed Queen a draft constitution for an Order of Merit in Science and Art, consisting of one grade split into two branches of knighthood: the Order of Scientific Merit, for Knights of Merit in Science, with the post-nominal letters KMS , and the Order of Artistic Merit, for Knights of Merit in Art, with the post-nominal letters KMA . However, Frederic Leighton , President of

7524-527: The canvas as an "arena in which to act" was pivotal in defining the approach of action painters . The cultural reign of Abstract Expressionism in the United States had diminished by the early 1960s, while the subsequent rejection of the Abstract Expressionist emphasis on individualism led to the development of such movements as Pop art and Minimalism . Throughout the second half of the 20th century, influence of AbEx can be seen in diverse movements in

7656-405: The canvas was "an arena in which to act". While abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock , Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning had long been outspoken in their view of a painting as an arena within which to come to terms with the act of creation, earlier critics sympathetic to their cause, like Clement Greenberg , focused on their works' "objectness". To Greenberg, it was the physicality of

7788-479: The canvas was not a picture but an event. In the 1940s there were not only few galleries ( The Art of This Century , Pierre Matisse Gallery, Julien Levy Gallery and a few others) but also few critics who were willing to follow the work of the New York Vanguard. There were also a few artists with a literary background, among them Robert Motherwell and Barnett Newman , who functioned as critics as well. While

7920-420: The canvas. He then applied paint to a small area of the canvas, and gradually worked outward from that point. For a new sitter, he often started with the head as a means of "getting to know" the person, then painted the rest of the figure, eventually returning to the head as his comprehension of the model deepened. A section of canvas was intentionally left bare until the painting was finished. The finished painting

8052-579: The capitals of Europe in upheaval, with an urgency to economically and physically rebuild and to politically regroup. In Paris, formerly the center of European culture and capital of the art world, the climate for art was a disaster, and New York replaced Paris as the new center of the art world. Post-war Europe saw the continuation of Surrealism , Cubism , Dada , and the works of Matisse. Also in Europe, Art brut , and Lyrical Abstraction or Tachisme (the European equivalent to abstract expressionism) took hold of

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8184-584: The conscious or unconscious influence both of his grandfather's psychoanalytical couch and of the Egyptian mummy, his dreaming figures, clothed or nude, staring into space until (if ever) brought back to health and/or consciousness. The particular application of this supine pose to freaks, friends, wives, mistresses, dogs, daughters and mother alike (the latter regularly depicted after her suicide attempt and eventually, literally mummy-like in death), tends to support this hypothesis." The use of animals in his compositions

8316-447: The definitions and possibilities that artists had available for the creation of new works of art. The other abstract expressionists followed Pollock's breakthrough with new breakthroughs of their own. In a sense the innovations of Pollock, de Kooning , Franz Kline , Rothko , Philip Guston , Hans Hofmann , Clyfford Still , Barnett Newman , Ad Reinhardt , Richard Pousette-Dart , Robert Motherwell , Peter Voulkos , and others opened

8448-408: The difficulty in deciding when a painting is completed, Freud said that "he feels he's finished when he gets the impression he's working on somebody else's painting". Paintings were divided into day paintings done in natural light and night paintings done under artificial light, and the sessions, and lighting, were never mixed. It was Freud's practice to begin a painting by first drawing in charcoal on

8580-415: The early 1950s his often stark and alienated paintings tended towards realism. Freud was an intensely private and guarded man, and his paintings, completed over a 60-year career, are mostly of friends and family. They are generally sombre and thickly impastoed , often set in unsettling interiors and urban landscapes. The works are noted for their psychological penetration and often discomforting examination of

8712-444: The early 20th century such as Wassily Kandinsky . Although it is true that spontaneity or the impression of spontaneity characterized many of the abstract expressionists' works, most of these paintings involved careful planning, especially since their large size demanded it. With artists such as Paul Klee , Kandinsky, Emma Kunz , and later on Rothko, Newman, and Agnes Martin , abstract art clearly implied expression of ideas concerning

8844-586: The emotional energy and gestural surface marks of abstract expressionists such as Pollock and de Kooning, the Color Field painters initially appeared to be cool and austere, effacing the individual mark in favor of large, flat areas of color, which these artists considered to be the essential nature of visual abstraction, along with the actual shape of the canvas, which later in the 1960s Frank Stella in particular achieved in unusual ways with combinations of curved and straight edges. However, Color Field painting has proven to be both sensual and deeply expressive albeit in

8976-408: The epitome of aesthetic value. He supported Pollock's work on formalistic grounds as simply the best painting of its day and the culmination of an art tradition going back via Cubism and Cézanne to Monet , in which painting became ever-'purer' and more concentrated in what was 'essential' to it, the making of marks on a flat surface. Pollock's work has always polarised critics. Rosenberg spoke of

9108-496: The figure to articulate their highly personal and powerful evocations. James Brooks' paintings were particularly poetic and highly prescient in relationship to Lyrical Abstraction that became prominent in the late 1960s and the 1970s. Clyfford Still , Barnett Newman , Adolph Gottlieb and the serenely shimmering blocks of color in Mark Rothko 's work (which is not what would usually be called expressionist and which Rothko denied

9240-531: The first stain pictures, one of the first large field pictures in which the stain technique was used, perhaps the first one. Louis and Noland saw the picture unrolled on the floor of her studio and went back to Washington, DC., and worked together for a while, working at the implications of this kind of painting. In abstract painting during the 1950s and 1960s, several new directions, like the Hard-edge painting exemplified by John McLaughlin , emerged. Meanwhile, as

9372-405: The flesh becomes increasingly highly and variably coloured. By about 1960, Freud had established the style that he would use, with some changes, for the rest of his career. The later portraits often use an over life-size scale, but are of mostly relatively small heads or in half-lengths. Later portraits are often much larger. In his late career he often followed a portrait by producing an etching of

9504-529: The floodgates to the diversity and scope of all the art that followed them. The radical Anti-Formalist movements of the 1960s and 1970s including Fluxus , Neo-Dada , Conceptual art , and the feminist art movement can be traced to the innovations of abstract expressionism. Rereadings into abstract art, done by art historians such as Linda Nochlin , Griselda Pollock and Catherine de Zegher critically shows, however, that pioneer women artists who have produced major innovations in modern art had been ignored by

9636-582: The group included Freud, Kitaj, Francis Bacon , Frank Auerbach , Michael Andrews , Leon Kossoff , Robert Colquhoun , Robert MacBryde , and Reginald Gray . Freud was a visiting tutor at the Slade School of Fine Art of University College London from 1949 to 1954. Freud's early paintings, which are mostly very small, are often associated with German Expressionism (an influence he tended to deny) and Surrealism in depicting people, plants and animals in unusual juxtapositions. Some very early works anticipate

9768-557: The highlights of the 2011 auction autumn season. On 10 November 2015 Freud's 2004 painting The Brigadier , a portrait of Andrew Parker Bowles in his British Army uniform, sold for $ 34.89 million US at Christie's in New York City , beating the $ 30 million US presale estimate for the work. In the 1940s Freud and fellow artists Adrian Ryan and John Minton were in a homosexual love triangle. After an affair with Lorna Garman , he went on to marry, in 1948, her niece Kitty Garman ,

9900-460: The illegitimate daughter of sculptor Jacob Epstein and socialite Kathleen Garman . They had two daughters, Annabel Freud and the poet Annie Freud , before their marriage ended in 1952. Kitty Freud, later known as Kitty Godley (after her marriage in 1955 to economist Wynne Godley ), died in 2011. In late 1952, Freud eloped with Guinness heiress and writer Lady Caroline Blackwood to Paris, where they married in 1953; they divorced in 1959. During

10032-564: The large-format picture Nude with leg up (Leigh Bowery) from 1992 was also shown in Frankfurt, which was removed in the Metropolitan Museum New York from the exhibition in 1993. The Frankfurt exhibition was realised in a personal dialogue between curator Rolf Lauter and Lucian Freud and is thus the only project Freud authorised in direct cooperation with a German museum. The major retrospective at London's Hayward Gallery in 1988

10164-414: The last person so honoured. Honorary members form another group, to which there is no numerical limit, though such appointments are rare; individuals from countries in the Commonwealth of Nations that are not headed by King Charles are therefore considered foreigners, and thus are granted only honorary admissions, such as Nelson Mandela (South Africa) and Mother Teresa (India). Upon admission into

10296-417: The late 1970s and 80s, Freud was also famously in a relationship with fellow painter Celia Paul . Freud acknowledged fourteen of his children, two from Freud's first marriage and 12 by various mistresses. Writer Esther Freud and fashion designer Bella Freud are his daughters by Bernadine Coverley. Freud was noted for his aversion to being photographed; he once kicked a photographer on his departure from

10428-519: The legacy of Modernism . As a young artist in pre-First World War Paris, Hofmann worked with Robert Delaunay , and he knew firsthand the innovative work of both Picasso and Matisse. Matisse's work had an enormous influence on him, and on his understanding of the expressive language of color and the potentiality of abstraction. Hofmann was one of the first theorists of color field painting, and his theories were influential to artists and to critics, particularly to Clement Greenberg, as well as to others during

10560-471: The matter; it was recorded in his diary that he met Sir Robert Peel on 16 January 1844 to discuss the "idea of institution of a civil Order of Merit" and, three days later, he conferred with the Queen on the subject. Though nothing came of the idea at the time, the concept did not wither and, more than 40 years later, on 5 January 1888, Prime Minister Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury submitted to

10692-454: The mid-1970s it has been argued that the style attracted the attention, in the early 1950s, of the CIA , who saw it as representative of the US as a haven of free thought and free markets, as well as a challenge to both the socialist realist styles prevalent in communist nations and the dominance of the European art markets. The book by Frances Stonor Saunders , The Cultural Cold War—The CIA and

10824-419: The model was. In the 1970s Freud spent 4,000 hours on a series of paintings of his mother, about which art historian Lawrence Gowing observed "it is more than 300 years since a painter showed as directly and as visually his relationship with his mother. And that was Rembrandt." Freud painted from life, and usually spent a great deal of time with each subject, demanding the model's presence even while working on

10956-496: The new order grew so heated that George ultimately dropped the idea, though he briefly reconsidered it in 1789; on 6 February of that year, he revised the design of the order, with the breast star to have sixteen points, the motto to be the Latin for "Learning improves character" and with membership to include distinguished scientists. Following the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, First Lord of

11088-442: The newest generation. Serge Poliakoff , Nicolas de Staël , Georges Mathieu , Vieira da Silva , Jean Dubuffet , Yves Klein , Pierre Soulages and Jean Messagier , among others are considered important figures in post-war European painting. In the United States, a new generation of American artists began to emerge and to dominate the world stage, and they were called Abstract Expressionists . The 1940s in New York City heralded

11220-447: The official accounts of its history, but finally began to achieve long overdue recognition in the wake of the abstract expressionist movement of the 1940s and 1950s. Abstract expressionism emerged as a major art movement in New York City during the 1950s and thereafter several leading art galleries began to include the abstract expressionists in exhibitions and as regulars in their rosters. Some of those prominent 'uptown' galleries included:

11352-686: The onslaught of the Nazis for safe haven in the United States. Many of those who didn't flee perished. Among the artists and collectors who arrived in New York during the war (some with help from Varian Fry ) were Hans Namuth , Yves Tanguy , Kay Sage , Max Ernst , Jimmy Ernst , Peggy Guggenheim , Leo Castelli , Marcel Duchamp , André Masson , Roberto Matta , André Breton , Marc Chagall , Jacques Lipchitz , Fernand Léger , and Piet Mondrian . A few artists, notably Picasso , Matisse , and Pierre Bonnard remained in France and survived. The post-war period left

11484-530: The other movements of the sixties and seventies and it influenced all those later movements that evolved. Movements which were direct responses to, and rebellions against abstract expressionism began with Hard-edge painting ( Frank Stella , Robert Indiana and others) and Pop artists , notably Andy Warhol , Claes Oldenburg and Roy Lichtenstein who achieved prominence in the US, accompanied by Richard Hamilton in Britain. Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns in

11616-512: The overall feeling in Pollock's most famous works – his drip paintings – read as vast fields of built-up linear elements. They note that these works often read as vast complexes of similarly-valued paint skeins and all-over fields of color and drawing, and are related to the mural-sized Monets which are similarly constructed of close-valued brushed and scumbled marks that also read as fields of color and drawing. Pollock's use of all-over composition lend

11748-656: The paintings of Gottlieb, and Pollock in that decade as well. Color Field painting initially referred to a particular type of abstract expressionism, especially the work of Rothko, Still, Newman, Motherwell, Gottlieb, Ad Reinhardt and several series of paintings by Joan Miró . Greenberg perceived Color Field painting as related to but different from Action painting. The Color Field painters sought to rid their art of superfluous rhetoric. Artists like Motherwell, Still, Rothko, Gottlieb, Hans Hofmann , Helen Frankenthaler , Sam Francis , Mark Tobey , and especially Ad Reinhardt and Barnett Newman, whose masterpiece Vir heroicus sublimis

11880-419: The paintings' clotted and oil-caked surfaces that was the key to understanding them as documents of the artists' existential struggle. Rosenberg's critique shifted the emphasis from the object to the struggle itself, with the finished painting being only the physical manifestation, a kind of residue, of the actual work of art, which was in the act or process of the painting's creation. This spontaneous activity

12012-474: The people in his life; friends, family, fellow painters, lovers, children. He said, "The subject matter is autobiographical, it's all to do with hope and memory and sensuality and involvement, really." However the titles were mostly anonymous, and the identity of the sitter not always disclosed; the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire had a portrait of one of Freud's daughters as a baby for several years before he mentioned who

12144-537: The post-nominal letters KM , and would wear a silver nine-pointed breast star with the image of Minerva at its centre, along with a "straw-coloured" sash worn across the chest from the right shoulder. The motto of the Order would be "Omnia posthabita scientiae" (in Latin , 'Everything comes after science'). Once the King's proposal was made public, however, arguments within intellectual circles over who would be most deserving of

12276-440: The post-war era who voiced support for abstract expressionism. During the early-to-mid-sixties younger art critics Michael Fried , Rosalind Krauss , and Robert Hughes added considerable insights into the critical dialectic that continues to grow around abstract expressionism. During the period leading up to and during World War II, modernist artists, writers, and poets, as well as important collectors and dealers, fled Europe and

12408-455: The presence of Piet Mondrian , Fernand Léger , Max Ernst, and the André Breton group, Pierre Matisse's gallery , and Peggy Guggenheim 's gallery The Art of This Century , as well as other factors. Hans Hofmann in particular as teacher, mentor, and artist was both important and influential to the development and success of abstract expressionism in the United States. Among Hofmann's protégés

12540-490: The private funeral. In 2008 Benefits Supervisor Sleeping (1995), a portrait of civil servant Sue Tilley , sold for $ 33.6 million – the highest price ever at the time for a work by a living artist. At a Christie's New York auction in 2015, Benefits Supervisor Resting sold for $ 56.2 million. On 13 October 2011, his 1952 Boy's Head , a small portrait of Charlie Lumley, his neighbour, reached $ 4,998,088 at Sotheby's London contemporary art evening auction, making it one of

12672-447: The reigning monarch of the realms, currently Charles III , with the assistance of his private secretaries; the order has thus been described as "quite possibly, the most prestigious honour one can receive on planet Earth." Within the limited membership is a designated military division, with its own unique insignia; though it has not been abolished, it is currently unpopulated, Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma having been

12804-548: The relationship between artist and model. Freud worked from life studies, and was known for asking for extended and punishing sittings from his models. Born in Berlin on 8 December 1922 (the city was then part of the Weimar Republic ), Freud was the son of a German Jewish mother, Lucie (née Brasch), and an Austrian Jewish father, Ernst L. Freud , an architect who was the fourth child of Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud . Lucian,

12936-472: The rest of his life. Freud was one of a number of figurative artists who were later characterised by artist R. B. Kitaj as a group named the "School of London". This group was a loose collection of individual artists who knew each other, some intimately, and were working in London at the same time in the figurative style. The group was active contemporaneously with the boom years of abstract painting and in contrast to abstract expressionism . Major figures in

13068-414: The reverse bears the royal cypher of the reigning monarch in gold. The insignia for the military grouping is distinguished by a pair of crossed swords behind the central disk. The ribbon of the Order of Merit is divided into two stripes of red and blue. The neck ribbon is 50mm in width, while the ribbon bar width is the standard British 32mm size for military or civilian wear. Men wear their badges on

13200-452: The same time. The Woman series are decidedly figurative paintings . Another important artist is Franz Kline . As with Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists, Kline was labelled an " action painter " because of his seemingly spontaneous and intense style, focusing less, or not at all, on figures or imagery, but on the actual brushstrokes and use of canvas; as demonstrated by his painting Number 2 (1954). Automatic writing

13332-425: The sculptors considered as being important members of the movement. In addition, the artists David Hare , John Chamberlain , James Rosati , Mark di Suvero , and sculptors Richard Lippold , Raoul Hague, George Rickey , Reuben Nakian , and even Tony Smith , Seymour Lipton , Joseph Cornell , and several others were integral parts of the abstract expressionist movement. Many of the sculptors listed participated in

13464-480: The second of their three boys, was the elder brother of the broadcaster, writer and politician Clement Freud (thus uncle of Emma and Matthew Freud ) and the younger brother of Stephan Gabriel Freud. The family emigrated to St John's Wood , London, in 1933 to escape the rise of Nazism . Lucian became a British subject in 1939, having attended Dartington Hall School in Totnes , Devon, and later Bryanston School , for

13596-471: The seminal paintings of Arshile Gorky ; Thomas B. Hess, the managing editor of ARTnews , championed Willem de Kooning . The new critics elevated their protégés by casting other artists as "followers" or ignoring those who did not serve their promotional goal. In 1958, Mark Tobey became the first American painter since Whistler (1895) to win top prize at the Venice Biennale . Barnett Newman ,

13728-400: The social protests of these painters. Abstract expressionism arose during the war and began to be showcased during the early forties at galleries in New York such as The Art of This Century Gallery . The post-war McCarthy era was a time of artistic censorship in the United States, but if the subject matter were totally abstract then it would be seen as apolitical, and therefore safe. Or if

13860-509: The spiritual, the unconscious, and the mind. Why this style gained mainstream acceptance in the 1950s is a matter of debate. American social realism had been the mainstream in the 1930s. It had been influenced not only by the Great Depression , but also by the Mexican muralists such as David Alfaro Siqueiros and Diego Rivera . The political climate after World War II did not long tolerate

13992-488: The subject in a different pose, drawing directly onto the plate, with the sitter in his view. Freud's portraits often depict only the sitter, sometimes sprawled naked on the floor or on a bed or alternatively juxtaposed with something else, as in Girl With a White Dog (1951–52) and Naked Man With Rat (1977–78). According to Edward Chaney , "The distinctive, recumbent manner in which Freud poses so many of his sitters suggests

14124-538: The term is applied to any number of artists working (mostly) in New York who had quite different styles, and even to work that is neither especially abstract nor expressionist. California abstract expressionist Jay Meuser , who typically painted in the non-objective style, wrote about his painting Mare Nostrum , "It is far better to capture the glorious spirit of the sea than to paint all of its tiny ripples." Pollock's energetic " action paintings ", with their "busy" feel, are different, both technically and aesthetically, from

14256-487: The title of the painting, as in his 1995 portrait Benefits Supervisor Sleeping , which in May 2008 was sold by Christie's in New York for $ 33.6 million, setting a world record auction price for a living artist . Freud's most consistent model in his later years was his studio assistant and friend David Dawson, the subject of his final, unfinished work. Towards the end of his life he did a nude portrait of model Kate Moss . Freud

14388-477: The totemic vision and the spatial structure of native-Indian painting from British Columbia and prepared the ground for the new spatial vision of the young American abstracts. His long essay Totem Art (1943) had considerable influence on such artists as Martha Graham , Isamu Noguchi , Pollock , Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman . Around 1944 Barnett Newman tried to explain America's newest art movement and included

14520-539: The transformation of painting into an existential drama in Pollock's work, in which "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." One of the most vocal critics of abstract expressionism at the time was The New York Times art critic John Canaday . Meyer Schapiro and Leo Steinberg along with Greenberg and Rosenberg were important art historians of

14652-575: The triumph of American abstract expressionism, a modernist movement that combined lessons learned from Matisse, Picasso, Surrealism, Miró , Cubism , Fauvism , and early Modernism via eminent educators in the United States, including Hans Hofmann from Germany and John D. Graham from Ukraine. Graham's influence on American art during the early 1940s was particularly visible in the work of Gorky, de Kooning, Pollock, and Richard Pousette-Dart among others. Gorky's contributions to American and world art are difficult to overestimate. His work as lyrical abstraction

14784-489: The varied flesh tones of his mature style, for example Cedric Morris (1940, National Museum of Wales ), but after the end of the war he developed a thinly painted very precise linear style with muted colours, best known in his self-portrait Man with a Thistle (1946, Tate) and a series of large-eyed portraits of his first wife, Kitty Garman , such as Girl with a Kitten (1947, Tate). These were painted with tiny sable brushes and evoke Early Netherlandish painting . From

14916-498: The violent and grotesque Women series of Willem de Kooning 's figurative paintings and the rectangles of color in Rothko's Color Field paintings (which are not what would usually be called expressionist, and which Rothko denied were abstract). Yet all four artists are classified as abstract expressionists. Abstract expressionism has many stylistic similarities to the Russian artists of

15048-423: The way to reinforce his newly established image as an artist and to promote his work. An example is his letter on April 9, 1955, "Letter to Sidney Janis : — it is true that Rothko talks the fighter. He fights, however, to submit to the philistine world. My struggle against bourgeois society has involved the total rejection of it." Strangely, the person thought to have had most to do with the promotion of this style

15180-660: The whole canvas is treated with equal importance (as opposed to the center being of more interest than the edges). The canvas as the arena became a credo of Action painting, while the integrity of the picture plane became a credo of the Color field painters. Younger artists began exhibiting their abstract expressionist related paintings during the 1950s as well including Alfred Leslie , Sam Francis , Joan Mitchell , Helen Frankenthaler , Cy Twombly , Milton Resnick , Michael Goldberg , Norman Bluhm , Grace Hartigan , Friedel Dzubas , and Robert Goodnough among others. Although Pollock

15312-458: The work of both Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland in a show that he did at the Kootz Gallery in the early 1950s. Clem was the first to see their potential. He invited them up to New York in 1953, I think it was, to Helen's studio to see a painting that she had just done called Mountains and Sea, a very, very beautiful painting, which was in a sense, out of Pollock and out of Gorky. It also was one of

15444-410: The works of Pollock and Hans Hofmann in Europe. By the 1960s, the movement's initial effect had been assimilated, yet its methods and proponents remained highly influential in art, affecting profoundly the work of many artists who followed. Abstract expressionism preceded Tachisme , Color Field painting , Lyrical Abstraction , Fluxus , Pop Art , Minimalism , Postminimalism , Neo-expressionism , and

15576-528: The years after World War II, a group of New York artists started one of the first true schools of artists in America, bringing about a new era in American artwork: abstract expressionism. This led to the American art boom that brought about styles such as Pop Art . This also helped to make New York into a cultural and artistic hub. Abstract Expressionists value the organism over the static whole, becoming over being, expression over perfection, vitality over finish, fluctuation over repose, feeling over formulation,

15708-414: Was Clement Greenberg , who became an enormously influential voice for American painting, and among his students was Lee Krasner , who introduced her teacher, Hofmann, to her husband, Jackson Pollock. During the late 1940s, Jackson Pollock's radical approach to painting revolutionized the potential for all Contemporary art that followed him. To some extent, Pollock realized that the journey toward making

15840-534: Was a "new language. He "lit the way for two generations of American artists". The painterly spontaneity of mature works such as The Liver is the Cock's Comb , The Betrothal II , and One Year the Milkweed immediately prefigured Abstract expressionism, and leaders in the New York School have acknowledged Gorky's considerable influence. The early work of Hyman Bloom was also influential. American artists also benefited from

15972-475: Was a New York Trotskyist: Clement Greenberg. As long-time art critic for the Partisan Review and The Nation , he became an early and literate proponent of abstract expressionism. The well-heeled artist Robert Motherwell joined Greenberg in promoting a style that fit the political climate and the intellectual rebelliousness of the era. Greenberg proclaimed abstract expressionism and Pollock in particular as

16104-482: Was a liberating signal to the artists of his era and to all that came after. Artists realized that Jackson Pollock's process—the placing of unstretched raw canvas on the floor where it could be attacked from all four sides using artist materials and industrial materials; linear skeins of paint dripped and thrown; drawing, staining, brushing; imagery and non-imagery—essentially took art-making beyond any prior boundary. Abstract expressionism in general expanded and developed

16236-467: Was abstract), are classified as abstract expressionists, albeit from what Clement Greenberg termed the Color field direction of abstract expressionism. Both Hans Hofmann and Robert Motherwell can be comfortably described as practitioners of Action painting and Color field painting. In the 1940s Richard Pousette-Dart 's tightly constructed imagery often depended upon themes of mythology and mysticism; as did

16368-744: Was an important vehicle for action painters such as Kline (in his black and white paintings), Pollock, Mark Tobey and Cy Twombly , who used gesture, surface, and line to create calligraphic, linear symbols and skeins that resemble language, and resonate as powerful manifestations from the Collective unconscious . Robert Motherwell in his Elegy to the Spanish Republic series painted powerful black and white paintings using gesture, surface and symbol evoking powerful emotional charges. Meanwhile, other action painters, notably de Kooning, Gorky, Norman Bluhm , Joan Mitchell , and James Brooks , used imagery via either abstract landscape or as expressionistic visions of

16500-424: Was closely associated with Color field painting. His paintings straddled both camps within the abstract expressionist rubric, Action painting and Color Field painting. Having seen Pollock's 1951 paintings of thinned black oil paint stained into raw canvas, Frankenthaler began to produce stain paintings in varied oil colors on raw canvas in 1952. Her most famous painting from that period is Mountains and Sea . She

16632-611: Was criticism of the portrayal in some sections of the British media. In 2005, a retrospective of Freud's work was held at the Museo Correr in Venice scheduled to coincide with the Biennale . In late 2007, a collection of etchings went on display at the Museum of Modern Art . Freud died in London on 20 July 2011 and is buried in Highgate Cemetery . Archbishop Rowan Williams officiated at

16764-429: Was expanded to include members of the Commonwealth of Nations that are not realms. The order has always been open to women, Florence Nightingale being the first woman to receive the honour, in 1907. Several individuals have refused admission into the Order of Merit, including Rudyard Kipling , A. E. Housman , and George Bernard Shaw . Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh , remains the youngest person ever inducted into

16896-470: Was notably influenced by the spontaneous and subconscious creation methods of Surrealist artists like André Masson and Max Ernst . Artists associated with the movement combined the emotional intensity of German Expressionism with the radical visual vocabularies of European avant-garde schools like Futurism , the Bauhaus , and Synthetic Cubism . Abstract Expressionism was seen as rebellious and idiosyncratic, encompassing various artistic styles, and

17028-572: Was one of the best known British artists working in a representational style, and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1989. His painting After Cézanne , noteworthy because of its unusual shape, was purchased by the National Gallery of Australia for $ 7.4 million. The top left section of this painting has been 'grafted' on to the main section below, and closer inspection reveals a horizontal line where these two sections were joined. In 1996,

17160-446: Was the "action" of the painter, through arm and wrist movement, painterly gestures, brushstrokes, thrown paint, splashed, stained, scumbled and dripped. The painter would sometimes let the paint drip onto the canvas, while rhythmically dancing, or even standing in the canvas, sometimes letting the paint fall according to the subconscious mind, thus letting the unconscious part of the psyche assert and express itself. All this, however,

17292-504: Was the first specifically American movement to achieve international influence and put New York City at the center of the Western art world , a role formerly filled by Paris . Contemporary art critics played a significant role in its development. Critics like Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg promoted the work of artists associated with Abstract Expressionism, in particular Jackson Pollock, through their writings. Rosenberg's concept of

17424-479: Was the focal point for the BBC Omnibus programme which saw one of the very few conversations with Freud ever recorded, in this case with Omnibus director Jake Auerbach . The conversations with the artist were made possible by Duncan MacGuigan from Acquavella Galleries New York. This was followed by a large retrospective at Tate Britain in 2002. In 2001, Freud completed a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II . There

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