#what abstract expressionism

[zytes]

fragile transformation

[th3-0bjectivist]

Untitled Paintblot #4 – Acrylic paint on canvas

This is part four of my black and white paint experiment for 23-24’. I want you to tell me what this image looks like to you in the comments in one to three words. This series is based on (but not following the hard and fast rules of) the Rorschach inkblot test. Just trying to get a sense of people’s minds and personality traits! It’s a social experiment, so click on the image, then go to the comment section and drop in your worded interpretation of the piece. All I want is three words or less. I don't need a treatise describing in detail why you feel the way you do about the piece. I don't need your extended opinions of how this piece reminds you of the geopolitical ramifications of the ongoing Israeli/Palestinian conflict, or Putin and the Ukraine. Click on the image and submit three words, give it a shot, it's all about audience participation. Comment away (even if it’s dirty), I’ll go first… and part one, part two and part three are here for reference.

[possumspaperpals]

Since Our Last Chat

This is another piece of art I did for my exploration into isolation. This one was to build off my mania painting with more desperation expressed. I did this one digitally at the beginning of my senior year and experimented with some of the different brushes to create more textures. It’s one of my favorites because of the angle and vibrancy of the colors. I did my best to make it feel like the figure was really pressing themself against the floor.

To explain the lore of this art further I must give a warning because it does go into some dark ideas and personal stuff

As I explained in my previous post with the triptych, I was exploring some of what I would feel in a situation where I was completely isolated and had expanded the ideas into an entire scenario. I find that being able to be messier with my art style, really move my hand arm and body while I’m painting helps release excess emotional energy. It’s definitely very weird to do so but I find it very cathartic to draw a version of myself experiencing this nightmare. Due to anxiety I’ve always experienced some level of isolation from others, but have also built very strong bonds with family and friends and I know I’d be devastated and spiral if I were to permanently lose them. I wanted to express feelings of loneliness and some more explosive feelings that I don’t usually express. I also wanted to share my art because I find the concepts I’ve come up with fun and interesting, even if it’s dark and weird, and I hope that I’m not alone in finding catharsis in this kind of thing.

In this scenario that I’ve come up with, an unknown event causes the entire universe to be completely erased. A bright crack of light consumes all and everything is gone in an instant, leaving me completely alone. I’m alone and wandering for a long time, having the occasional breakdown. Because the very reality of this place has unraveled, it becomes apparent that some level of manipulation towards my surroundings can happen, so I make a “home”. This building eventually becomes very warped, impossible, and large, like the house from House of Leaves and nothing much changes. This version of me can’t die, not permanently. Maybe a few seconds or minutes of relief, but the body will rebuild itself as if nothing happened. This is the life of this version of me for the rest of eternity, doomed to forever reminisce on what was lost, what was never had, and to slowly decay and regenerate in mind and body for the rest of time.

I have considered making this character entirely separate from myself so it’s a little less weird, but I’ve already drawn a lot of art with myself in it (even if it doesn’t look like me very much) and I don’t really feel like changing it.

Other inspirations for this scenario comes from the results of an incursion as shown in multiverse of madness but with a far emptier void, I Have no Mouth and I Must Scream, A Short Stay in Hell, Manifold Garden, the library of babel, NaissancE, art by Matthias Jung, Cinta Vidal, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi.

[mistyspells]

“Train ride home” digital, 2025.

There’s something special about the night landscape of a city as seen from a train car. It’s dark through and through; the light that glitters only hints at where you might be heading but it doesn’t ever clearly tell you where. That’s for you to figure out.

[epersonae]

throwing these here for my own reference, mostly - @frommybookbook has been reading about the women of Abstract Expressionism, and I had this moment of "wait didn't the CIA have some involvement in that somehow?" (my brain, a soup of random tidbits that I have accrued over the years) and did a little bit of looking up, and "yes, sort of?"

[todaycoza]

-Anywhere 61-

21 December 2024

1587 x 4087 Digital Unedited

[jolynejay]

[ A Little Gift of Hope to Myself ] [ Fleeting Sanctuary ] [ Breathe ] [ At the Seams ] [ Collapse of the Mind's Singuarity ]

So, changing up my meds did wonders for the art brain :DD

[dailymusemaniac]

www.redbubble.com/people/Inspire76 this un resting world

[trixster37]

My pfp is a mark rothko painting that looks a lot like the lesbian flag. God I love abstract expressionism.

[dreamgirledward]

i think more people should be mean to the particular 'a kid/i could make that' crowd of people who dislike or even hate modern art

[th3-0bjectivist]

Untitled Paintblot #3 – Acrylic paint on canvas

This is part three of my black and white paint experiment for 23'. I want you to tell me what this image looks like to you in the comments in one to three words. This painting is a slight variation on the last one, just a little different. This series is based on (but not following the hard and fast rules of) the Rorschach inkblot test. Just trying to get a sense of people’s minds and personality traits! It’s a social experiment, and I sure am having a lot of fun getting your impressions! It's also very relaxing to paint these as they require brush work that becomes quite repetitive and soothing. Click on the image above and tell me what it looks like. What is it to you? You could always just kick the artist (me) square in the balls and say something like 'It's bad art'. I don't seem to care! Comment away (even if it’s dirty), I’ll go first… and part one and part two are here for reference. Looks like I'll be doing more of these thru 24' as well!

[gbfmi1]

ZOGIV:\ OTHERNPEOPLE>

[dailyrothko]

No, the Popularity of Abstract Art is Not the Result of a CIA PsyOp

If you are unlucky enough to move around the internet these days and talk about art, you’ll find that many “First commenters” will hit you with what they see as some hard truth about your taste in art. Comments usually start with how modern art is “money laundering” always comically misunderstanding what that means. What they are saying is that, of course, rich people use investments as tax shelters and things like expensive antiques and art appraised at high prices to increase their net worth. Oh my god, I’ve been red-pilled. The rich getting richer? I have never heard of such a thing.

What is conveniently left out of this type of comment is that the same valuation and financial shenanigans occur with baseball cards, wine, vacation homes, guitars, and dozens of other things. It does indeed happen with art, but even the kind that the most conservative internet curator can appreciate. After all, Rembrandts are worth money too, you just don’t see many because he’s not making any more of them. The only appropriate response to these people who are, almost inevitably themselves, the worst artists you have ever seen, is silence. It would cruel to ask about their own art because there’s a danger they might actually enjoy such a truly novel experience.

When you are done shaking your head that you just subjected yourself to an argument about the venality of poor artists plotting to make their work valuable after they died, you can certainly then enjoy the accompanying felicity of the revelation they have saved to knock you off your feet: “Abstract art is a CIA PsyOp”

Here one must get ready either to type a lot or to simply say “Except factually” and go along your merry, abstract-art-loving way. But what are the facts? Unsurprisingly with things involving US government covert operations, the facts are not so clear.

Like everything on the internet, you are unlikely to find factual roots to the arguments about government conspiracies and modern art. The mere idea of it is enough to bring blossom for the “I’m not a sheep” crowd, some of whom believe that a gold toilet owning former president is a morally good, honest hard-working man of the people.

The roots of this contention come from a 1973 article in Artforum magazine, where art critic Max Kozloff wrote about post-war American painting in the context of the Cold War, centering around Irving Sandler’s book, The Triumph of American Painting (1970). Kozloff takes on more than just abstract expressionism in his article but condemns the “Self-congratulatory mood”of Sandler’s book and goes on to suggest the rise of abstract expressionism was a “Benevolent form of propaganda”. Kozoloff treads a difficult line here, asserting that abstraction was genuinely important to American art but that its luminaries, “have acquired their present blue-chip status partly through elements in their work that affirm our most recognizable norms and mores.”

While there were rumblings of agreements around Kozloff’s article of broad concerns, it did not give birth to an actual conspiracy theory at the time. The real public apprehension of this idea seems to mostly come from articles written by historian Frances Stonor Saunders in support of her book, “The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters” (New York, New Press, 2000). (I have not read this 525 page book, only excerpts).

The gist of Ms. Saunders argument is a tantalizing, but mostly unsupported, labyrinthine maze of back door funding and novelistic cloak and dagger deals. According to Saunders, the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), an anti-communist cultural organization founded in 1950, was behind the promotion of Abstract art as part of their effort to be opinion makers in the war against communism. In 1966 it was revealed that the CCF was funded by the CIA. Saunders says that the CCF financed a litany of art exhibitions including “The New American Painting” which toured Europe in the late 1950s. Some of this is true, but it’s difficult, if not impossible, to know the specifics.

Noted expert in abstract-expressionism, David Anfam said CIA presence was real. It was “a well-documented fact” that the CIA co-opted Abstract Expressionism in their propaganda war against Russia. “Even The New American Painting [exhibition] had some CIA funding behind it,” he says. But the reasons for this are not quite what the abstract art detractors might be looking for. After all, the CCF also funded the travel expenses for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and promoted Fodor’s travel guides. More than trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes, it was meant to showcase the freedom artists in the US. enjoyed. Or as Anfam goes on to say, “It’s a very shrewd and cynical strategy, because it showed that you could do whatever you liked in America.”

For what it’s worth, Saunders’s book was eviscerated in the Summer 2000 issue of Art Forum at the time of its publication. Robert Simon wrote:

“Saunders draws extensively on primary and secondary sources, focusing on the convoluted money trail as it twists through dummy corporations, front men, anonymous donors, and phony fund-raising events aimed at filling the CCF’s coffers. She makes lengthy forays into such topics as McCarthyism, the formation and operation of the CIA, the propaganda work of the Hollywood film industry, and New York cultural politics—from Partisan Review to MoMA to Abstract Expressionism. Yet what seems strangely absent from Saunders’s panoramic history, as if it were a minor detail or something too obvious to require discussion, is the cultural object itself: The complex specifics of the texts, exhibitions, intellectual gatherings, paintings, and performances of the culture war are largely left out of the story.”

Another problem with the book seems to be that Saunders is an historian but not an art historian. For me, I sensed an overtone of superiority in the tale she’s spinning and most assuredly from those that repeat its conclusion. The thinly veiled message of some is that if it were “Real art” it would not have had be part of this government subterfuge. The reality is very different. For one thing, most of us know it is simply not true that you can make people devoted to a type of art for 100 years that they would sensibly hate otherwise. Another issue is that it’s quite obvious none of the artists actually knew about any government interference if there was any. Pollock, Rothko, Gottlieb and Newmann were all either communists or anarchists. Hardly the group one would recruit the help the US government free the world of communism. Additionally, this narrow cold war timeline ignores a huge amount of abstract art that Jackson Pollock haters also revile and consider part of the same hijacking of high (Frankly, Greek, Roman, or Renaissance) culture. If you look at the highly abstract signature work of Piet Mondrian and observe the dates they were painted, you’ll see 1908, 1914, 1916. This is some of the art denigrated as a CIA PsyOP, 35 years before the CIA even thought about it. Modern art didn’t come from nowhere as many would have you believe to discredit its rise. There was Surrealism, Dada, Bauhaus, Russian futurism and a host of other movements that fueled it.

Generally, people like to argue. On the internet, “I don’t like this” is a weak statement that always must be replaced by “This is garbage” or my favorite, “This is fake.”

It’s hardly surprising that the more conservative factions of our society look for any government involvement in our lives to explain why things are not exactly as they wish them to be, given the (highly ironic) conservative government-blaming that blew up after Reagan. In addition, modern fascists have always had a love affair with the classical fantasy of Greece and Rome. Both Mussolini and Hitler used Greece and Rome as “Distant models” to address their uncertain national identity. The Nazis confiscated more than 5,000 works in German museums, presenting 650 of them in the Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art, 1937) show to demonstrate the perverted nature of modern art. It featured artists including Marc Chagall, Max Ernst, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee, among others. The fear of art was real. It was the fear of ideas.

To a lot of people on the internet just the mentioning a “CIA program” is enough to get the cogs turning, but as with many things, the reality of CIA programs and government plots is often less than evidence of well planned coup.

The CIA reportedly spent 20 millions dollars on Operation Acoustic Kitty which intended to use cats to spy on the Kremlin and Soviet embassies. Microphones were planted on cats and plans were set in motion to get the cats to surreptitiously record important conversations. However, the CIA soon discovered that they were cats and not agreeable to any kind of regulation of their behavior.

As part of Operation Mongoose the CIA planned to undermine Castro's public image by putting thallium salts in his shoes, which would cause his beard to fall out, while he was on a trip outside Cuba. He was expected to leave his shoes outside his hotel room to be polished, at which point the salts would be administered. The plan was abandoned because Castro canceled the trip.

Regardless of your feelings on this subject or how much you believe abstract art benefited from government dollars, Saunders herself quotes in her book a CIA officer apparently involved in these “Long leash” influence operations. He says, “We wanted to unite all the people who were writers, who were musicians, who were artists, to demonstrate that the West and the United States was devoted to freedom of expression and to intellectual achievement, without any rigid barriers as to what you must write, and what you must say, and what you must do.” Hardly the Illuminati plot we were promised.

In 2016, Irving Sandler, author of the book that started Kozloff tirading in 1973, told Alastair Sooke of The Daily Telegraph, “There was absolutely no involvement of any government agency. I haven’t seen a single fact that indicates there was this kind of collusion. Surely, by now, something – anything – would have emerged. And isn’t it interesting that the federal government at the time considered Abstract Expressionism a Communist plot to undermine American society?”

This blog post contains information and quotes sourced from The Piper Played to Us All: Orchestrating the Cultural Cold War in the USA, Europe, and Latin America, Russell H. Bartley International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Spring, 2001), pp. 571-619 (49 pages) https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20161004-was-modern-art-a-weapon-of-the-cia https://brill.com/view/journals/fasc/8/2/article-p127_127.xml?language=en https://www.guggenheim-bilbao.eus/en/learn/schools/teachers-guides/the-dark-side-of-classicism https://www.artforum.com/features/american-painting-during-the-cold-war-212902/ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/modern-art-was-cia-weapon-1578808.html https://www.artforum.com/columns/frances-stonor-saunders-162391/ https://www.artforum.com/features/abstract-expressionism-weapon-of-the-cold-war-214234/ Mark Rothko and the Development of American Modernism 1938-1948 Jonathan Harris, Oxford Art Journal, Vol. 11, No. 1 (1988), pp. 40-50 (11 pages)

[leeril]

Infatuated Nerd

Diner Date

Tobias Rogers x Reader

Bitchy reader, weird guy Toby, college au

Banner credit- @cafekitsune

One / Two / Three

~ Toby, leaning against the greasy counter, cheek lazily perched on his palm, fingers twitching. His eyes darting between the booths but always drifting down to the coffee stained book in his hand.

~ ‘A woman looking at men looking at women’ none of it made a great deal of sense to him, but hey, he was willing to give it a try. Maybe if he could remember a phrase, an artist, then he could strike up a conversation with you. But first, he needs to make a mental note of looking up the words. No point using them if he couldn’t even pronounce them.

~ Toby sighs to himself, finger tracing the jagged outline of the stain before bringing his face down and sniffing at the pages deeply, the mark a reminder of your connection, and if he inhales deep enough- he could almost make out the vanilla perfume you always wear. Did it smell that strong this morning?

~ “What, the, fuck are you doing?”

~ Shit. Shit. Shit.

~ “Are you always this freaky?”

~ Terrified would be an understatement. Too terrified to lift his head. Too terrified to breathe. In his mind he was an opossum playing dead, yeah he knew it wasn’t working, but can you blame a guy for trying?

~ “Oi! Tics!”

~ Toby hated the nickname, an under the belt attack on a disorder he couldn’t control. But from your mouth? You may as well have been professing your love. He lifted his head quickly, loose curls bouncing, honeyed brown eyes meeting your sharp ones.

~ “S-so, Koon-ning. He’s a-a-a cunt.”

~ You pursed your lips, rubbing at the bridge of your nose and exhaling deeply. And Toby, sweet, jittery Toby, watched with an exaggerated grin. He truly thought he had said something remarkable, he was eagerly awaiting the praise.

~ “Did you just call Willem De Kooning, a great lead to abstract expressionism, a cunt?”

~ Gauging by your deadpan tone, Toby knew, he may have made a teensy error. His eyes were quick to glance back down at the page. ‘Aggressive’. ‘Brutal’. He was beyond confused. He looked back up, looking like a wounded animal, and you couldn’t help but sigh.

~ “Forget it. Just get me a strawberry milkshake, tics”

~ You waved your hand in dismissal, rolling your eyes and walking back to the booth you were in. Toby had his eyes glued to your form the whole way, eyes focused on the ‘too tight’ thigh highs, hand subconsciously clenching, imagining rolling the plush between his fingers.

~ It took him a moment to register your command and when he did he rushed to work. Quickly mixing the ingredients, with somewhat minimal spillage, topping with extra cream and the pinkest heart shaped sprinkles. Milkshake on tray, he rushed to your booth.

~ “St-st-strawberry milksh-shake.”

~ You gave him a Quick Look, frown on your pretty lips. You leaned back and crossed your arms as he stood there with a dopey grin. He looked at you with stars in his eyes and twitching hands, almost expectant.

~ “Well? Get lost already, sheesh.”

~ He held up a hand and opened his mouth, then promptly shut it, nodding along with that same grin. He scurried back behind the counter as you watched him with a quirked brow.

~ Looking down to the milkshake you noticed the messily scribbled on napkin. The words hardly intelligible. ‘Extra strawberries and sprinkles just the way you like.’ Odd. Very odd. But who are you to question it. Free toppings isn’t a bad start to an apology for a ruined top.

~ Toby’s eyes glazed over as he watch those rosy lips wrap around the straw, he took in how your permanent scowl softened slightly before hardening again and your fingers going back to typing away at your laptop. He bathed in the knowledge that he clearly did well. Your milkshake already comped and an extra weekend shift sorted, in preparation for the perfect cami he found to replace yours.

~ He sighed dreamily, watching the way you carried yourself with an effortless grace. But something caught his eye, that same napkin he left was getting scrunched up by your perfectly manicured hand and getting messily stuffed into your tiny Vivienne archive orb bag. Yes he knew the name. And yes he would deny researching your favourite brands from stalking your insta.

~ Toby was beyond ecstatic, only now he wished he had also left his number, but he’ll settle for the small victory. After all, he’s still got plenty of opportunities to look forward to. Like the weekend trip you’re taking to the lakes, funny thing is him and Lyra are also taking a trip there too!

~ Your laptop was long shut now, slurping up the last remnants of your milkshake and lazily scrolling your phone. Maybe he should take the chance and come over to talk to you- wait.. you’re coming over.

~ “Right, how much.”

~ Yet again he found himself mesmerised, taking a deep breath to help calm down.

~ “On-on the ho-house”

~ You stared at him, a bored expression on your face before letting out a small ‘Hmph’ and a nod. He was hung up on every little movement, memorising it and replaying it.

~ “Thought so.”

~ “So abo-bout the-“

~ “Save it, tics.”

~ And just like that you walked out, laptop under one arm and your pretty checked bag on the other. He sighed, a dumb love struck smile on his face as he ran a hand through his hair, shoulder jerking. He got another conversation, and you even took the napkin. Poor boy was on cloud 9.

[todaycoza]

-Down the Drain in the Membrane-

12 November 2024

Moving Picture 864 x 864

[scribblecon]

Hooogh I’ve had this in my wips for a while and finally finished it. Untitled Skids x reader because it’s almost 2am and I just want to post it I can’t faff about deciding on a title right now lol

SFW, GN reader

—

“Skids! You made it!” You exclaim, arms open as Skids enters your habsuite.

“How could I pass up spending time with you?” He throws you a lazy smile before taking a look around the room. He notices what appears to be a workstation set up on the desk with some materials you’d been gradually collecting from various planets the Lost Light had stopped at on its travels. “Er, what, exactly, is this by the way? Some kind of experiment?”

You break out into a grin as you tell him to sit down and switch to his holo avatar, then start explaining. How you remembered him saying he doesn’t have any hobbies because he gets bored of things once he masters them, and that got you thinking, what if there’s a skill no one can truly master? You’re not sure about Cybertronians but humans have been arguing about and striving to perfect different art forms for centuries, so, why not start with painting?

Now in his avatar, Skids joins you on the desk to inspects your materials. It’s nice of you to think of him like this, but it’s only a matter of time before his brain starts piecing things together and he gets restless for something else to do. At least it’s an excuse to spend time with you.

“Now, I know what you’re thinking,” You interrupt Skids’s train of thought, patting his avatar’s shoulder. “You’ll just master painting like you have with all your other skills. But I want you to go into this with no examples or references. Paint something from the heart. Or, uh, spark, in your case. You know what I mean.”

“From the spark.” He turns to face you, raising an eyebrow. Still not fully convinced, but interested.

“… I’m going to explain the basic properties of oil painting so you don’t destroy any of my stuff by accident and then turn you loose on a canvas. How does that sound?”

“Sounds like you’re throwing me in at the deep end.”

“And when has that ever been a problem for you?”

—

You’re hard at work directly opposite him, having arranged the easels so that he ‘couldn’t cheat’ by watching your own creative process, but Skids has no idea where to start. Self expression does not come easily to mechs that have been fighting for millions of years. Staring at the colours you had set out for him, he picks one at random and squeezes it onto the palette. He’ll just make something up as he goes and say it’s abstract expressionism.

What started out as picking colours at random has turned into something far more methodical and an exercise in frustration. There’s something in the back of his mind that he can’t quite remember but as he smears another streak of orange across the canvas the memory feels more tangible, only for it to evade him just as he feels like it’s within reach. Swapping out brushes for palette knives, he builds up layers of texture, carving out shapes in some areas and spreading paint around in others.

Ready to take a break, you drop your brush in a jar of turpentine and walk over to see how Skids is doing. “Woah. It’s like staring into a pool of magma.” You can’t quite put your finger on it, but something about the painting makes you uneasy. “A little unsettling when you look at it for too long though, don’t you think?”

“Unsettling?” Taking a step back, he frowns as he wipes off the palette knife in his hand. That hadn’t been his intention. He kind of sees what you mean though. In a sea of oranges and yellows so bright they almost glow against the dark background, right in the centre there’s some marks that look like part of a face in the midst of an inferno. He hadn’t put a face there on purpose, but now he’s spotted it, he can’t unsee it.

“It’s not a bad thing.” You murmur. “Are you alright though? You looked pretty intense earlier.”

“Nah, I’m fine.” He can feel his head starting to hurt. “Using a holo-matter for too long can really wear a guy out, though. Time to call it a day?”

“Oh, god,” checking the time, you realise several hours have passed. “We’ve been working for a while, huh?”

“It’s no bother,” He says, avatar dissipating. It takes a moment before his optics switch back on and he continues speaking. “Really, It was interesting. We should do this again. Now how about you clean yourself up and we head to Swerve’s?”

You look at your hands and down at your clothes, marred with paint stains. “Sounds like a plan. Give me 10 minutes.”