Where to go this fall to rediscover Abstract Expressionism

Three museums are showing abstract expressionist art this fall: the Royal Academy in London just opened its show with more than 150 works of art from the movement's major artists, followed by a Jackson Pollock exhibition starting on October 1 at the Art Museum Basel.

Beginning October 22, the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, will be showing an exhibition entitled "Women in Abstract Expressionism," featuring works by Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell.

The movement evolved in the US at a time of great uncertainties: World War II had just ended, and people were afraid of the atomic bomb. The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union was on the horizon. Abstract Expressionism is a result of World War II to some extent, says Volker Adolphs, an art historian at the Art Museum Bonn, explaining that New York replaced Paris as an art center because of the many German and French artists forced to flee Europe.

No rules

The movement is not purely American, either, he says, but has European characteristics. The inability to put into words the horrors of the war played a significant role, Adolphs says. "You can't paint the horrors, so abstraction became art's global language."

Abstract Expressionism had no rules. Feelings and spontaneity were more important than perfection, reason and regulations. Every one of the artists, from Arshile Gorky and Barnett Newman to Robert Motherwell, tried out their own style. The one thing they did have in common were the huge canvasses that threaten to engulf the viewer, making him part of the artwork.