ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM is a school of art characterized by a high degree of emphasis on the EXPRESSIVE qualities of paint and other materials in their application to canvas. The term, first used in 1929 to describe the nonrepresentational paintings of Wassily Kandinsky that derived from German EXPRESSIONISM, is now applied to the work of a group of abstract painters who were active mainly in New York City from the mid-1940’s to the early 1960’s.

抽象表现主义是一种艺术流派，以高度强调颜料和其它材料应用于画布上的表现力为特征。该术语在1929年首次被使用，来描述源自德国表现主义的瓦西里·康定斯基的非写实绘画，现在适用于一群抽象画家的作品，他们从20世纪40年代中期至20世纪60年代早期主要活跃在纽约市。

The “Club.”  The group was characterized by raucous and argumentative spirit; its center was a loose-knit organization called the “Club.” The “Club” included Jackson Pollock, who in 1946 began his famous exuberant and unconventional “drip” painting by spreading lengths of raw canvas across the floor and dripping various colors of paint on them from cans or paint-loaded brushes. He was known as an “action” painter.

“俱乐部”。这群人以吵吵嚷嚷，争强好胜为特征；它的中心是一个被称为“俱乐部”的松散组织。该“俱乐部”包括杰克逊·波洛克，他于1946年开始他著名的充满想象力和非传统的“水滴”画，他将粗画布铺满地板，从罐中或从沾满颜料的刷子上将各种色彩的颜料滴在画布上。他被称为“行动派”画家。

Willem de Kooning, another member, worked his way slowly from cubism to total abstraction. (However, in 1952 he reintroduced figurative elements into his paintings.) Barnett Newman worked principally with large flat areas of color broken by vertical lines or bands of varying width, and Franz Kline is best known for his expansive black and white, highly brushed abstractions. Other “Cub” members included Arshile Gorky, Adolf Gottlieb, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and Bradley Walker Tomlin.

威廉·德·库宁，一位缓慢从立体派到完全抽象派的成员。（然而，在1952年他将形象元素重新引入了他的绘画中）。巴奈特·纽曼主要是通过垂直线或宽度不一的条纹，用大面积的平面色彩分割处理画面，而弗朗茨·克莱恩最著名的是他广阔的黑与白，高度的拉丝抽象。其他的“俱乐部”成员包括阿尔希尔·戈尔基，阿道夫·戈特利布，菲利普·加斯顿，罗伯特·马瑟韦尔，马克·罗思科，克利夫特·斯蒂尔和布拉德利·沃克·汤姆林。

Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, who are often classified as “neo-Dada” and “proto-pop” artists, may be grouped with the abstract EXPRESSIONISTS, although they were frowned on by many fellow “Club” members. Rauschenberg once erased a de Kooning drawing, giving a literal example of what artists were calling the need to erase the past. The aesthetic importance of Johns’ literal paintings of targets and flags lies in his manner of applying paint and his “respect” for the picture plane.

罗伯特·劳森伯格和雅斯佩尔·约翰斯通常被归类为“新达达派”和“原始流行”艺术家，他们都可归为抽象表现主义，尽管许多同“俱乐部”的成员并不赞成他们。劳森伯格曾经擦掉了一幅德·库宁的画，这就是艺术家所谓的抹去过去需要的确切例子。约翰斯绘画的目标和旗帜的美学重要性在于他涂染颜料的方式和他对画面平面的“尊重”。

Influences.  Before the mid-1940’s the United States seemed artistically provincial and isolated. But the presence in New York during World War II of a number of European painters, including Joan Miro and Matta, as well as the critic Andre Breton, had a marked influence on the abstract EXPRESSIONISTS, as did the abstractions of Piet Mondrian and the experiments with “automatic writing” of Andre Masson.

影响。在20世纪40年代中期之前，美国在艺术方面显得狭隘又孤立。但二次大战期间一些欧洲画家，包括琼·米罗和玛塔，以及批评家安德烈·布勒东出现在纽约对抽象表现主义产生了显著影响，对皮特·蒙德里安的抽象和安德烈·马松的“自动书写”实验也是如此。

Newman, Gottlieb, and Rothko first experimented with symbols deriving from surrealism, but their symbols became increasingly abstract, and the pictorial means and structures they employed became more and more simplified. Motherwell also was influenced by the surrealist and worked with their idea of exploring the unconscious through automatism (drawing done without the intervention of the conscious ego). Gorky began by willfully imitating the cubist Picasso but evolved his own use of the biomorphic forms.

纽曼，戈特利布和罗思科首先用源自超实现主义的符号进行了实验，但他们的符号变得越来越抽象，而且他们使用的绘画手段和结构也变得越来越简化。马瑟韦尔也受到超现实主义者的影响，并用他们的想法，通过无意识行为探索无意识（没有意识自我干预的绘画）。戈尔基开始有意模仿立体派艺术家毕加索，但却进化了他自己对生物形态形式的运用。

Theories and Goals.  The abstract EXPRESSIONIST seemed to view painting as an existential act in which the struggle of the artist with his materials was a search of for self-creation, self-definition, and an awareness of human values. The critic Harold Rosenberg coined the term “action painting” and called the canvas an arena where, presumably, the artist could find his moment of truth.

理论与目标。抽象表现主义者似乎将绘画视为一种存在主义的行为，其中艺术家与其材料的搏斗是一种对自我创造、自我定义以及对人类价值意识的探索。批评家哈罗德·罗森伯格创造了“行动绘画”这个术语，并将画布称作一个舞台，在那里，大概艺术家会找到他真实的瞬间。

Critic Clement Greenberg saw “modernist” art as a formal evolution related to the breakup of established aesthetic habits. According to his theory, Pollock’s skeins of paint appear to come forward, leaving the plane of the canvas behind them, and the artist’s large, initially un-stretched canvases with their “all-over” patterns signaled the end of traditional “picture box” easel painting. Greenberg encouraged and advised painters, notably Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland. He held that their raw canvases stained with bright hovering colors represented a modernist advance over Pollock’s more linear application of paint.

批评家克莱门特·格林伯格认为“现代主义”艺术是一种与既定审美习惯解体有关的形式演变。根据他的理论，波洛克一连串的颜料似乎向前延伸，将画布的平面抛在了后面，而艺术家巨大的，最初未拉伸的画布与他们“整体”模式标志着传统“画盒”的画架绘画的终结。格林伯格鼓励并劝告画家们，尤其是海伦·弗兰肯沙勒、莫里斯·路易斯和肯尼思·诺兰。他认为，他们的原始画布布满了明亮的悬浮色彩，代表了一种超越波洛克更线性绘画应用的现代主义进步。

Related Artists.  The French term “tachiste” (literally, an artist using dabs of color) applies to the artists Jean Fautrier, Georges Mathieu, Pierre Soulages, and Nicolas de Stael. Except for its French orientation, their movement was virtually identical abstract EXPRESSIONISM. In sculpture no single movement can be traced directly to abstract EXPRESIONISM, although the works of such individuals as Reuben Nakian, David Smith, and Richard Stankiewicz show influences of the movement.

相关的艺术家。“泰奇派”（字面意思是，艺术家使用的小块颜料）这个法语术语适用于艺术家让·福特里耶、乔治斯·马蒂厄、皮埃尔·苏拉热和尼古拉斯·德·斯塔埃尔。除了其法国的倾向，他们的运动在事实上是完全相同的抽象表现主义，尽管像鲁本·奈基安、大卫·史密斯和理查德·斯坦凯维奇这些个人的作品都展示了该运动的影响。

                           G. R. SWENSON, “Art and Artists” Magazine

                            G．R．斯文森，“艺术与艺术家”杂志

                                                         2023年8月17日译

(译者注：该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第1卷，第56页)