What was Abstract Expressionism? Abstract Expressionism after Aboriginal Art

Abstract

ISSN: 1443-4318 (Print) 2203-1871 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raja20 What was Abstract Expressionism? Abstract Expressionism after Aboriginal Art Rex Butler To cite this article: Rex Butler (2014) What was Abstract Expressionism? Abstract Expressionism after Aboriginal Art, Abstract expressionism is among the many Western art movements that Aboriginal art has been compared to. That is to say, Aboriginal art is understood through abstract expressionism. But what would happen if we reversed the poles and understood abstract expressionism through Aboriginal art? One of the things that Aboriginal art might bring to our understanding of abstract expressionism is a sense of meaningfulness, or even of meaningfulness without meaning. Indeed, it is by means of this category that we might distinguish abstract expressionism from abstract art in general. In this paper, I will outline this distinction through the work of the American philoso-pher Stanley Cavell, and attempt to show how it plays out in the criticism of one of Cavell's great followers, the art historian Michael Fried. We will see how the search for the 'intention' behind abstract expressionism is replaced by the need to find the 'motivation' that drives abstraction. It is for this reason that something ended in art with the passing of abstract expressionism, at least until it returned with the arrival of contem-porary Aboriginal art.