Abstract Expressionism and Beat Generation

The Artists

History of the Beat

The connecting theme through art from the Beat Generation is the element of collaboration. Poets, musicians, artists, filmmakers, dancers and thespians all socialized together, which made the San Francisco renaissance all that much more exciting. The Beat Generation was largely made possible by the wave of artist-oriented establishments that began to appear in San Francisco in the early 1950s. The string of co-operative galleries, City Lights Bookstore, and even the California School of Fine Arts, all influenced the success of the Beat Generation and its multi-talented artists.

To the artists of the Beat Generation, living in the Bay Area allowed them the freedom to experiment, concentrate and make artistic leaps. Jay De Feo’s The Rose and its long creation characterize the attitudes of the Beat artists and their dedication to craft. De Feo began work on “The Rose” in 1958; it would take her seven years to complete to a 129” x 92” x 8”, 2300-pound, mandala-shaped oil painting. As probably the most important Beat Generation painting of the Bay Area, “The Rose” reflected the San Francisco Beat Generation’s interest in Eastern thought, as well as in combined mediums—De Feo introduced bits of glass and beads into the thick-skinned oil painting, skewing the lines between painting, sculpture and assemblage.

Just as they were occurring on the West Coast, Happenings began to emerge in newly formed hangouts on the East Coast—cafes, galleries and bookstores were meeting places for artists and poets to share ideas and present work. Jack Kerouac, John Cage, and the Black Mountain College students and instructors collaborated on performance and exhibitions similar to those happening on the West Coast. Publications such as the Village Voice and articles in the New York Times and the Evergreen Review brought vital attention to the movement in New York. Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Jim Dine were given shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Jim Dine’s Car Crash Happening at the Judson Gallery, and the first jazz/poetry readings of the Brata Gallery signaled the importance of experimentation and cooperation in contemporary art. The interdisciplinary exchange of artistic ideas spread across the country heralding a new era of creative expression.

History of the San Francisco School of Abstract Expressionism

Abstract Expressionism swept through the ranks of Bay Area painters in the late 1940s with the intensity of a religious revival. Years later, even such a salty iconoclast as Hassel Smith could say that his “conversion” to it was “instantaneous,” and had come about when he saw Clyfford Still’s 1947 show at the Legion of Honor. Although generally influenced by Still, and sometimes Rothko, many Bay Area painters developed distinctive styles of Abstract Expressionism in the years ahead.

Among teachers at the California School of Fine Arts, David Park, Elmer Bischoff, and Ed Corbett were quickly caught up in the momentum. Bischoff’s earliest abstract paintings were inspired by Rothko’s pictographic abstractions of the mid-1940s, but he soon moved into a meaty, gestural action painting. It was characterized by dynamic paths of movement, lush, thick surfaces, and dissonant, sometimes violent color.

Abstract Expressionism was no more homogeneous in the Bay Area than it was on the East Coast. Styles ranged widely, even among the students at the California School of Fine Arts, who saw themselves, and were perceived by others, as hard-core Abstract Expressionists: from Jorge Goya’s thin, floating washes of pastel colors to the brick-like slabs of paint with which Edward Dugmore constructed his abstractions with a palette knife; from Ernest Briggs’s pointillistic fields teeming with motes of color to the explosive coverings of paint that John Grillo—probably the earliest and purest of the school’s action painters—spread across canvases, discarded doors, and virtually any other available surface.

The two artists who became the best-known representatives of Bay Area Expressionism were Richard Diebenkorn and Sam Francis. Other major artists of the movement included Hassel Smith, Elmer Bischoff, David Park, James Kelly, Ed Corbett, Frank Lobdell, and Jack Jefferson.