This thesis focuses on Ibram Lassaw's open-lattice works by first discussing works from 1945 to 1950 to outline the conceptual and formal themes that contributed to the later style. The open-lattice form presents a complicated interplay between geometric and biomorphic forms, heaviness and lightness, tangibility and remoteness, and openness--which creates a partial boundary whereby the viewer is able to visually penetrate the form, while still being removed bodily. This thesis attempts to root Lassaw's open-lattice works and his metallic accretion process within the Abstract Expressionism movement by comparing the similar bodily experience of viewing Lassaw's works to those of Jackson Pollock's, for example, with a focused attention on material characteristics. This embodied approach offers a new and highly-appropriate language by which to discuss Lassaw's textural open-lattice works. A video of Lassaw's sculpting process is included with this thesis as a supplemental file.

Many scholars exclude New York painter Philip Guston (1913-80) from the artistic tradition of Abstract Expressionism due to his absence from New York City during the group's early formative years. This thesis asserts, however, that Guston's role in Abstract Expressionism can be firmly established through his unique interpretation of the formative influence of surrealist automatism. Though never engaging with the surrealists directly, Guston explored automatist ideas upon meeting New York School experimental music composers John Cage and Morton Feldman. This trio's engagement with the Zen Buddhist concepts of unimpededness and interpenetration influenced Guston to create compositions through chance operations, a process Cage would call "indeterminacy." My aim is to enrich an understanding of Guston's idiosyncratic relationship to Abstract Expressionism and, ultimately, to offer a more expansive definition of Abstract Expressionism in general, allowing for a broader understanding of the formation of American modernism.

My most recent body of work frees me from traditional animation and graphic design principles that had become second nature in my creative practice over years of commercial work in industry. I now find myself unconsciously creating shape and form without a preconceived vision of the final outcome. This allows for a free-flowing approach to my canvas. The canvas in which my forms are created is virtual space and can be described as an infinite cube. The first step I take in each of my pieces is creating a cube with the center residing at Cartesian coordinates 0,0,0. From there, I make the decision either to subdivide the cube into sections or extrude faces from the cube. In either case, I begin to see the possibilities in which the form can take. Some forms are organic and rhythmic while others become machined and rigid. At this stage, color and light are not a part of the equation.

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As a woman whose career lifted off during the era of Abstract Expressionism, Elaine de Kooning is precariously positioned between her gender and her career. She began painting in the midst of a male-dominated movement and in later years continued to use very masculine themes in her art; however, her gender sets her apart from her mostly male colleagues during the Abstract Expressionist period. The mid-century expectation of machismo and masculinity shaped Elaine de Kooning’s art and career, and there is a tension within her art as she tried to fit the established (male) persona of the typical Abstract Expressionist artist while also maintaining a female identity. As the wife of Willem de Kooning, Elaine is most often discussed with respect to this relationship. Her name is infrequently mentioned in scholarship without reference to Willem, and her contribution to art history has only recently been studied in any length in Jane Bledsoe’s Elaine de Kooning (1992) and in a series of smaller gallery publications. Furthermore, Elaine has become recognized and respected, in some cases, more for her critical writings for Art News during the 1950s and 1960s than for her art. She was an artist turned art critic, and this crossover has further complicated the scholarly attention devoted to her. Elaine consistently revisited male-inspired subject matter: in her portraiture she painted predominantly male sitters; in her cave painting-inspired work she reflected a society of primitive male hunters; in her series of sports paintings she depicted male basketball and baseball players in dynamic postures; in her Bacchus series she investigated a male god and the vitality of the statue’s writhing male musculature; and in her bull and bison series she worked with the clichéd animalistic symbol of masculine strength and virility. These subjects, combined with the ejaculatory style of Abstract Expressionism’s loose brushwork and vibrant swirling colors, provide a unique contrast to the artist, herself, as a female personality. / Art History / Accompanied by three .doc Microsoft Word documents.

<p>Undersökning av färgen i förhållande till innehåll i Mark Rothkos abstrakta verk. Studien innefattar en undersökning i hur man skriver om färg i anslutning till Rothkos abstrakta målningars innehåll och huruvida färg kan avgöra betydelser.</p> / <p>A study about color in relationship to content in Mark Rothko’s abstract paintings. It includes a research in how people write about color when discussing Mark Rothko´s paintings and how that is related to content. It also looks at color in relationship to meaning.</p>

Undersökning av färgen i förhållande till innehåll i Mark Rothkos abstrakta verk. Studien innefattar en undersökning i hur man skriver om färg i anslutning till Rothkos abstrakta målningars innehåll och huruvida färg kan avgöra betydelser. / A study about color in relationship to content in Mark Rothko’s abstract paintings. It includes a research in how people write about color when discussing Mark Rothko´s paintings and how that is related to content. It also looks at color in relationship to meaning.

In 1998, the Museum of Modern Art held a retrospective exhibition of artworks by Jackson Pollock. Curators Kirk Varnedoe and Pepe Karmel worked in an art historical context that had been significantly shaped by the early critical writings by Clement Greenberg and Harold Rosenberg. The curators’ stated intention for the exhibition installation was to provide “a fresh chance for new generations of artists to come to terms with a legendary figure” and to enable “the broader public to reassess a quintessentially American artist in light of three decades of new scholarship,” without “ hewing to any particular critical dogma.” Despite this curatorial intention, this thesis examines the ways in which the retrospective inscribed Greenberg’s and Rosenberg’s theories, while disregarding subsequent scholarship that did not explicitly inscribe or align with the mid-century criticism in its account of Jackson Pollock.

The artist discusses the work for his Masters of Fine Arts exhibition, Mind under Matter, held at the Tipton Gallery in downtown Johnson City, Tennessee. Exhibition dates are from March 27th through April 5th 2017. ‘Matter under Mind’ explores the balance of control and non-control within the art-making process. This technique creates an automatic dialogue resulting in abstraction guided by the subconscious. The title ‘Matter under Mind’ is a slight play on the phrase ‘mind over matter’ emphasizing how matter/material is manipulated by the mind through the making of artwork, and within the mind’s eye or imagination. The video installation featuring the work is accompanied by a soundscape to bring the viewer deeper into the creative process. The video symbolizes the idea of ‘solve et coagula’ or, dissolve and coagulate, destroy to recreate by revealing how the process of cleaning paint off of a surface creates artwork in itself.

Master of Philosophy / This thesis investigates the work of Morris Louis (1912-1962) in relation to ‘opticality’, a theory developed by the prominent American art critic Clement Greenberg. Between the late 1930s and 1950s, Greenberg developed a comprehensive argument concerning the opticality, or the optical illusion, of abstract painting. This theory influenced common approaches towards Abstract Expressionist painting during the 1940s and 1950s, culminating in Greenberg’s writing on ‘Colourfield’ painting in major texts of the 1960s such as ‘Louis and Noland’ (1960). Through research into the development of Morris Louis’ technique, including several of his major series as well as lesser known works, this thesis argues that our understanding of Louis’ work has been constricted by a narrow perception of the opticality of his 'stain' paintings, and explores Louis' technique in light of alternative interpretations of his work.