Bird

The word “Expressionism” has meant rather different things at different times to different people. The first critics defined Expressionism in terms of French art; art historians until recently focused on the German prewar movement; literary historians saw a direction centered in the German war generation...

Prodded by interviewers to reminisce about the start of her relationship with Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner invariably mentioned the continuing impact of Mexican muralism on her future husband and...

Technical examination of the paint layer can confirm a work’s age or authenticity and add to knowledge of the painting’s execution and the artist’s intended effects. Examination can address either the materials or the ways they were handled—the techniques. Study of paint materials offers information that is specific but of limited interpretive use to the art historian. Pigment identification can deny (but rarely confirm) a paintings age, or can identify areas of repaint. Precise identification …

Although several of the New York School painters took pains to make it clear, at certain stages of their careers, that their art engaged “the unconscious,” none pursued this engagement more insistently than Jackson Pollock. As his friend and colleague James Brooks put it, Pollock’s “break into the irrational was the most violent of any of the artists’, and his exploration of the unconscious, the most daring and persistent.” Although persistent, Pollock’s engagement with the unconscious was by no …