The Seasons by Lee Krasner
This is a piece of artwork by Lee Krasner was composed in 1957 using oil and house paint on a canvas, the dimensions for the piece of art is 92 3/4 × 203 7/8. The composition for this art has effectively used lines which are curved to obtain the smooth and sensual feeling on the artwork. They have also created movement as an audience can easily move the eye across while grasping the content. Shapes have also been used; organic shapes like circles and rectangles have been used to pronounce certain aspects of the art like the leaves (Wechsler 11). She never forgot to use colors for the art; colors like red and green have been mainly used in the painting. These colors have been used to emphasize on certain effects that attracts the attention of the audience (Wechsler 13). The texture for the art is rough and refined to bring distinctions on components making up the art. Deep spaces of objects making up the art have been achieved through the use of brown lines.
The artist portrayed the theme of sex and female gender as this art for composed at the time Lee’s husband was killed in a car crash. This artist is from the Abstract expressionist movement and it is believed that she wanted to pass messages of anger, guilt and pain as she had marital problems prior to the death of her husband. This art work has represented female parts for instance, at the center of the painting a female pudendum can be seen and has been achieved successfully using red color and separated by brown lines. Under this the belly of a woman can be seen with a woman’s face on top of the chest. Evidently visible parts like eyes, mouth and even hair can be seen while trees and flowers surround the woman.
This artwork can be interpreted to be signifying that in spite of all problems in life people can still start again; the red and green colors shows the seasons of spring where things can start all over again. In her art she portrayed women to have more problems in the post war era, such problems ranged from discrimination and frustrations in marriage. She presents women as those who carry bury the entire hatchet and start life all again. Finally the artwork shows her wish that they could rekindle their marriage without the involvement of other people especially the mistress to her husband.
Woman and Bicycle
This is a piece of art composed by Willem de Kooning; the medium used for the composition is oil, enamels and charcoal on linen. The facet for the artwork is 194.3 by 124.8 cm. The artist was born in Rotterdam and moved to New York where he initially worked as a painter and decorator (Wechsler 34). His paintings were the first figurations of women that represented the power, strength and violent nature of women (Wechsler 35).
Willem just like Lee was one among the Abstract Expressionists, he believed that his paintings would integrate more things like drama, pain, love, figures on the space. Woman and Bicycle represents a woman standing and the figure can be seen despite the integration of the body and other objects of the composition (Wechsler 38). The woman on the composition has bright yellow dress, high heels and dazzling smiles representing glamorous women who could appear in movies during that time. This portrayed how women began discovering their potentials in the post war period; they had more power and started believing in themselves.
This piece of art has the theme of sex and the woman can be seen to be on her own staring at us with broad smile on her face. Women were not considered to be chained on divine landscape like men at the time. Her joy and unruliness has been well represented by brushstrokes of lines that points to all directions. This painting has successfully and effectively rendered the female form.
Conclusion
The two artists have employed abstract expressionism to bring forward the most radical feminine and masculine personalities of people that emerged during the period between 1950 and 1960. Female artists tried to position their work in a more genderless form that lead to a lot of conflict on the roles that women played in the society. This kind of representing art was powerful and was in line with the males of the post war era in America (Wechsler 47). My view is that women at the time communicated their messages in ways that would emphasize their power, energy and sexual orientations. Some of the female artist even tried to hide their identities even though it was asserted that the gender of artist was part and parcel of their social identity in correlation to the works they produced. The two artists succeed in bringing out the true identities of women, their feelings and power.
Work cited
Wechsler, J. Pathways and Parallels: Roads to Abstract Expressionism. New York: Hollis
Taggart Galleries. 2007.