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The Emersonian Presence in Abstract Expressionism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Matthew Baigell
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Extract

In all of the literature on abstract expressionism, very little has been written about what I would call the Emersonian presence. It is a presence rather than a source or influence. And it is not limited to Emerson, since it can be found in such figures as Walt Whitman and William James, among others. But it is easier to say “an Emersonian presence” because precise influences are difficult, probably impossible, to establish. What I am concerned with is an attitude of mind that recurs in American intellectual history and that resonates through much 20th-century American art, ranging from early modernists such as John Marin through artists associated with process art. I do not mean to deny other welldocumented European and American sources, influences, and presences in abstract expressionism and other American movements, but only to call attention at this time to the Emersonian presence.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 15 , October 1990 , pp. 91 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

NOTES

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3. My reading of Emerson is based on Poirier, Richard's The Renewal of Literature: Emersonian Reflections (New York: Random House, 1987)Google Scholar and Bloom, Harold's two books, Poetry and Repression (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976)Google Scholar and Agon, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982)Google Scholar. Some of my citiations from Emerson's writings came from these books.

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30. From an exhibition statement, The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, 1914.

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