Abstract Expressionism : The Shock of the New by Simone Bloom

Sunday, May 8

On Sunday Simone considered the influence of Kandinsky, Picasso and Miro before focussing on the work of Pollock, De Kooning, Frankenthaler, Krasner, Kline and Rothko.

This is an extract from a mural Jackson Pollock made in 1943 for Peggy Guggenheim’s apartment at East 61st Street, New York: painted in a frenzied all-night session under the influence of alcohol – and jazz!

If you missed this event you can view the recording here.

Abstract Expressionism is a visual language which can be both destructive and creative, personal and universal and in the United States it gave expression to the optimism and uncertainty of the post-war world. In Pollock’s words, “Today painters … can work from within. The modern artist is working with space and time and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating… Painting is self-discovery.”

Its genesis was the Second World War exodus of European artists to the U.S.A. and Jackson Pollock was one of a new generation of American artists whose work manifested these influences, and by bringing them to fruition shifted the centre of gravity of the arts to New York…………………………..from Paris where previously the loosening of political constraints, following the Russian Revolution, had liberated a new, completely abstract art form: constructivism – symbolic of the forceful, dynamic modernisation of society – and the fusion of various strands such as cubism, primitivism and surrealism.

Simone Bloom, 2017 Winner of the Pebeo/Cass Art Prize, studied art at Watford College and Chelsea School of Art and architecture at South Bank University and The Bartlett, UCL. She is a practising architect and lecturer on architecture, art and design and has exhibited her paintings and photography at the Strand Gallery, Camden Arts Centre Gallery, The Peggy Jay Gallery (Burgh House) and other London galleries, and her architectural drawings and models in London, Lisbon and Los Angeles. Simone will be Artist in Residence at The Shard for the last week in May 2022.