Contemporary Abstract Expressionism

Abstract Expressionism is frequently looked at as a transformation in artwork, although activity additionally included a number of sculptors whose work challenged standard conventions of this medium. David Smith made available frameworks that defied the heavy size and amount generally of sculpture. Louise Nevelson put her sculptural assemblages up against the wall surface, sharing the grand scale of the woman painter contemporaries. Like their peers, sculptors in addition turned to unconventional and often scavenged products, including less-common procedures, particularly welding.

David Smith: Painter, Sculptor, Draftsman, ed. Edward F. Fry (Washington, DC: Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture outdoors, 1982), 130.

An ongoing process of joining two bits of metal together by warming the surfaces to the point of melting and then pushing all of them together.

Materials regularly create a work of art, plus the categorization of art in line with the products utilized (as an example, painting [or much more specifically, watercolor], drawing, sculpture).

A three-dimensional composition produced from a variety of usually non-artistic materials and objects.

Questions & Activities

1. David Smith once stated, “I do maybe not recognize the limitations where artwork stops and sculpture begins.”1

   Start thinking about this statement. Why is something a painting? What makes something a sculpture?

   Compare. Traditionally, sculptures had been created from products like bronze or marble, plus they often lay on pedestals. How will be the sculptures of David Smith and Louise Nevelson like conventional sculpture? Just how will they be distinctive from standard sculpture?

   Review your thoughts in a-one- or two-paragraph reaction.