Arely Has Such a Massive Tr

"New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new

ways and new means of making their statements ... the modern painter

cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in

the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture."

Jackson Pollock

Rarely has such a massive transfer of influence has ever touched the

world as did in the Paris to New York shift of the 1940's and 1950's.

All of the characters of American art were to be expelled in a rapid

shift of power. No longer would American artists be the lamb suckling

at the teat of European sources, American art was to dispose of

narrow-mindedness, an uninterested public, and liberate itself into a

valued and meaningful force equal to, and in fact exceeding that of,

art produced anywhere within the era. The painting and sculpture that

emerged from the 'New York School' in the mid 1940s was the foremost

artistic movement of its time. It was labelled as the Abstract

Expressionist movement. This is a turning point in American art

history for the reason that it caused the rest of the art world to

recognize New York as the new center of innovation.

The outbreak of World War Two had devastated the world massively,

crushing world economies, social structure and optimistic manifestos

left, right and centre. The war had long ruled out any naïve

enthusiasm for art or artist, art no longer had the courage to be a

vehicle for ideology of any ki...