Changing concerns in the field of theory and practice reflected developments in the social and economic structures after the horrible events of World War II. The complex relationship between the loss of faith in the Enlightenments promise that rationality would produce increased freedom and changes in cultural value systems caused by revolutionary developments in science and technology brought into focus natural contradictions in modern thinking. Abstract Expressionists of the 1940s and 50s were abstract artists because they had been schooled in early modern painting. They were expressionist artists because of their strong belief in the individual gesture and in the freedom to practice by any means, including the human figure (literally), to convey their intentions. Abstract Expressionism was the first art movement with both American and European roots. They reflected the strength of migr artists such as Max Ernst, Matta, Arshile Gorky, and Piet Mondrian who had fled the war and destruction of Europe.Abstract Expressionists used numerous sources from the history of modern painting to combine the old with the new, for example: the expressionism of Van Gogh, the abstraction of Kandinsky, the saturated colors of Matisse, and the fascination with the unconscious of surrealist painters like Dali. Abstract Expressionism was less a style than an attitude. Another thing that was important to painters was to tap into the psychic self, also a steady faith in the expressive character of the mark. Without realisms impression to the visible world, abstraction would be able to portray like the subject of something as real as a feeling or simply- art itself. As Mark Rothko and Adolph Gottlieb once said, There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing (UKY, p.2). As World War II occurred on the international level, Abstract Expressionists primarily emphasized the dignity of the individual by showing how the human imagination could mov...
