Neo-expressionism
Neo-expressionism is a style of
late modernist or early-postmodern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s. Neo-expressionists were sometimes called Transavantgarde, Junge Wilde or Neue Wilden ('The new wild ones'; 'New Fauves' would better meet the meaning of the term). It is characterized by intense subjectivity and rough handling of materials.[1]
Neo-expressionism developed as a reaction against
Abstract Expressionism, precedents in Pop Painting,[3] and New Image Painting: a vague late 1970s term applied to painters who employed a strident figurative style with cartoon-like imagery and abrasive handling owing something to Neo-Expressionism. The New Image Painting term was given currency by a 1978 exhibition entitled New Image Painting held at the Whitney Museum.[4]
Critical reception
Neo-expressionism dominated the art market until the mid-1980s.Modern Art, art critic Robert Hughes dismissed Neo-Expressionist painting as retrograde, as a failure of radical imagination, and as a lamentable capitulation to the art market.[7]
Critics such as
backlash against feminism, anti-intellectualism, and a return to mythic subjects and individualist methods they deemed outmoded.[8][6] Women were notoriously marginalized in the movement,[9] and painters such as Elizabeth Murray[10] and Maria Lassnig were omitted from many of its key exhibitions, most notoriously the 1981 New Spirit in Painting exhibition in London which included 38 male painters but no female painters.[11]
Neo-expressionism around the world
The movement became known as
Neue Wilden in Germany, and the group Figuration Libre was formed in France in 1981.[12]
See also
References
- ^ Chilvers, Ian and John Glaves-Smith. A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art. Oxford University Press (2009), p. 503
- ^ Graham Thompson,American Culture in the 1980s, Edinburgh University Press, 2007, p. 73
- ^ Chilvers, Ian and John Glaves-Smith. A Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Art. Oxford University Press (2009), p. 503-504
- ^ [1] New Image Painting, Oxford Reference
- ^ Graham Thompson,American Culture in the 1980s, Edinburgh University Press, 2007, p. 70
- ^ .
- ^ Graham Thompson,American Culture in the 1980s, Edinburgh University Press, 2007, p. 71
- ^ Graham Thompson,American Culture in the 1980s, Edinburgh University Press, 2007, p. 30
- ^ Cohen, Alina (2019-03-01). "The Bad Boy Artists of the 1980s Owe a Debt to Their Feminist Predecessors". Artsy. Retrieved 2021-05-07.
- ISBN 978-1-4051-5235-8.
- ^ "A New Spirit of Painting makes a comeback (with one woman artist this time)". www.theartnewspaper.com. Retrieved 2021-05-06.
- ^ Tate. "Neo-expressionism". Tate. Retrieved 2023-02-20.