The Abstract Autograph

The American Abstract Expressionist movement of the 1950s inspired a consideration of the gesture of painting, a “reading” of the emotions of physical movement. There is, however, a great tension between the personal, embodied approach to abstract art and a formal consideration of its components, reflected in the divergent views of art critics Harold Rosenberg and Clement Greenberg, respectively. Featuring work by Grace Hartigan, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Motherwell, and Damien Hirst, The Abstract Autograph explores these approaches to “reading” abstract forms, asking How do we currently understand the role of the “artist’s hand” in the act of painting?

Listen to a Kemper ARTcast based on this exhibition

Above: Grace Hartigan, The Massacre, 1952; oil on canvas, 81 in. x 130 in.; Bebe and Crosby Kemper Collection, Gift of the Enid and Crosby Kemper Foundation 1995.38