When the Art World Came to New York: Abstract Expressionism

Tomorrow is the eleventh lecture in the 150 Years of Contemporary Art Lecture Series focusing on When the Art World Came to New York: Abstract Expressionism at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

Jackson Pollock - Convergence, 1952

"At the end of World War II, with its death, destruction, and the resulting knowledge that mankind now had the ability to destroy itself with atomic weapons, American artists felt that representational art could no longer adequately express the mood of the times. Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, and the artists who would become known as the Abstract Expressionists looked inside themselves and into the distant past to create a new way of painting that shifted the center of the art world from Paris to New York." -source

Next week: The 1960s: Soup Cans, Comic Books, Optical Illusions, and Popular Culture (11:15 am - 12:20 pm)