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Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University. 2nd and 3rd Year - Bachelor of Creative Arts. 1997.

Note: Full details of the relevant topics and questions are not included and the following passages are excerpts from more detailed and extensive responses to the various topics of research.

• Student: Kelly Steele © 1997: On the significance of Cubism.
• Student: Helen Walter ©1997: On the significance of William Morris.
• Student: Raquel Turner ©1997: On the origins of Expressionism.
• Student: Phillip Ludwig © 1997: On the significance of Robert Rauschenberg.
• Eleanor Whitworth © 1997: On Giorgio De Chirico.
• Sophie Dawson © 1997: On the significance of Edward Wadsworth.
• Jenni Cane © 1998: On the historical progression of Cubism:

There were, however, enough painters moving in a similar direction to constitute an important entity. A group consisting of artists such as De Kooning, Pollock, Rothko, Gottlieb, Smith, Still, Newman, Hoffmann and Guston. In this sense the closest idea of a definition of Abstract Expressionism can be interpreted as the philosophic pre-occupations of the artists involved, a set of attitudes

There also came into place the myth that the artist had to function outside a pre-ordained system - societal or otherwise. In this sense, Abstract Expressionism created a distance between the artist and the middle class. ... The rupture between the artist and the middle class is illustrated by Robert Motherwell in his essay the "Modern Painter's World", in which he suggests there are three possibilities for the artist in his relationship to the public and the middle-class. His first proposal suggests that the artist ignore the middle-class and seek the eternal, his second suggests that the artist can support the middle-class by resorting an aesthetic that is decorative and thirdly, the artist can act in outright opposition. In the mid 1940's most artists seemed inclined to accept Motherwell's first proposal - to ignore the middle-class and seek their own aesthetic. ... Inevitably, it was the set of attitudes that surrounded the 1940's that led to the creation of an art form that would reflect those attitudes. It was the natural progression to a style that would demolish existing values in art, disregarding recognisable subject matter, drawing, compositional harmony and to a certain extent colour. All that remained was the creative process itself since it was implicit in the artistic process and therefore could not be demoralised by a marketable society. For these artists, abstraction was the obvious course - a course which allowed for a great expansion of creative possibilities. ... This style of painting, is none more explicit than in the painting of Jackson Pollock. ... Pollock's style, explosive and lavish, is evident in paintings such as Echo (1951), The She-Wolf (1944) and Pasiphae (1943). This idea of free flowing form is illustrated in other artists including Arshile Gorky in The Leaf of the Artichoke is an Owl (1944) and Willem de Kooning's Excavation (1950) which also abandons representation and compositional harmony. ... Therefore, Abstract Expressionism gains its value and importance in Twentieth Century American painting by first and foremost re-establishing the function of art within society and by re-defining its role in terms of the artist's own creative act, rather than its historical value as a middle-class commodity. In the words of Sam Hunter, "It was a necessary adjunct to a more elevated painting objective."

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