Realism and Abstractionism

Realism and Abstractionism

ART 100 A World of Art

Becky Leek

Christine Holzer-Hunt

March 10, 2013

There was an influx of immigrants into the United States in early 20th century. Among the more important painters to immigrate to the US shortly before WWII, was the German born Hans Hoffman (1880-1966), who came after spending time back and forth between Munich and Paris (Soltes, L40, 01:36). He immigrated to the US by 1932, taught at Berkeley, and by 1934 went back to New York City to establish his own school, becoming renowned as a teacher as much as an artist and painter in his own right (Soltes, L40, 01:55). Some of Hoffman’s interests include Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), whose style is so different from what we see of Hoffman (Soltes, L40, 02:20). Yet the principle underlying Hoffman, we will see in the principle underlying Pollack, and that is what Hoffman called his "push and pull technique." It suggests that there is no such thing as non-realist art, that the use in a judicious manner, even in an abstract landscape of space, form, and color, can create a sense of reality. So realism is the incorrect term, and we should be using representationalism in contrast with abstraction instead of realism, since abstraction can be just as real, can just as really reflect on space and into space, as in an Albertian 15th century Florentine discussion of space on a flat surface (Soltes, L40, 02:25-03:13).

One of Hoffman's works, called Summer, from 1960, exemplifies one of his styles, yet we see it expressing the push-pull kind of idea. It is an abstract image which offers layers of large blocks of color that affect each other with regard to pushing and pulling, into and out from, the picture plane. It contrasts those ordered rectilinear blocks with a series of chaotic splotches, that seem to shrink down in decreasing size, all the way down to passages that are almost pointillist in feel (Soltes, L40, 03:15-03:51).

Grant Wood (1891-1942) was another important...