FIGURATIVE EXPRESSIONISM

[Zlatko Waterman]

Since I have sometimes been referred to as a "figurative expressionist", a label I don't completely reject, even though I dislike being labeled by anyone ( the minuscule number of reviews my work, rarely exhibited, has received insures my not being labeled anything . . .), I sometimes read articles like this one, which I share here with you.

The rage for Abstract Expressionism, and the famous book by Irving Sandler, "The Triumph of American Painting" whose thesis is that American painters finally wrested, in Abstract Expressionism, the "lead" in world painting from the French modernists, did much to steamroller and displace figurative expressionism. Ben Shahn, often referred to as a "social realist", was once one of the most famous American artists. Shahn was, to my eye, a figurative expressionist too.

Shahn was almost completely forgotten during the heyday of Ab-Ex art and Pop's enthusiasms.


( link to Shahn)

http://www.artcyclopedia.com/artists/shahn_ben.html


Lester Johnson was also an important painter now largely forgotten.


Johnson:


(article by Harold Rosenberg)

http://www.procuniarworkshop.com/home/i ... le/39.html



(Lester Johnson images):


http://www.procuniarworkshop.com/home/i ... ges/3.html




--Z

[jimboloco]

interesting of course the pseudo culture of the avant guarde
in new york post ww11

the prominence of an art movement like the ones listed in arthistories will not happen again.

we are more like the perennial cultures now, the primitives and the non-europeans, nowhere the center. we become more intimate, i guess. will there ever be another picasso? no, but there are a lot of Norms and Anemones out there. i see subtle hope in this.