![]() One Year in the Milkweed 1944 oil on canvas 94.2 x 119.3 cm (17 1/16 x 46 15/16 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Name: Vostanik Manoog Adoyan (aka Arshile Gorky) Born: April 15, 1904, Van Vilayet (note: he was not entirely certain of his birth date. It was sometime between 1902 and 1905, and he had changed it from year to year) Died: July 21, 1948, Sherman, CT (44 years old) Spouse: Agnes Magruder Education: National Academy Museum and School Much of Gorky's work reflects both the artist's traumatic past as a genocide survivor and the memory of the exquisite beauty of his early childhood surroundings in Armenia. Pioneered the trend of naming his abstract compositions with titles directly referring to particular objects and places, thus fusing objective reality and subjective feeling in his works. Gorky provides an important link between prewar European modern styles and the emergence of Abstract Expressionism in America during the 1940's. Gorky, who had no formal art training, studied art by looking at other artists, such as Cezanne and Picasso, and trying to paint like them. He was influenced by Cubist composition and by Surrealist ideas, such as automatism, which meant creating with the unconscious, rather than the conscious mind and reason. He was what is termed a 'painterly' painter - meaning that his painting is more concerned more with shape/mass than line; and his forms do not have strong contours, but rather flow into one another in a loose manner. Arshile Gorky was especially good friends with William de Kooning, another well known Abstract Expressionist artist. The two had worked together in New York, and were each heavily influenced by the other during the Great Depression (before either artist was well known in the art world). More Info
Even More Info! More More More Info!! Questions: Do you think that making art that directly relates to his past time (living during a genocide) act as a coping mechanism in some sense? Even though he made some of his work by giving it specific titles that directly relate to certain objects and places, can people tell that the art work is the object or place mentioned in his titles? If so, does this make it Abstract Expressionism or just abstract art? What artists do you think Gorky took after? What artists do you think took after Gorky? |
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