THE WASHINGTON AND NEW YORK SCHOOLS OF COLOR

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06797578
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: March 9, 2023
• Document Release Date: January 29, 2021
• Case Number: F-2011-00399

Approved for Release: 2021/01/29 C06797578
The Washington and New York Schools of Color
The Washington School of Color, represented by many of the paintings in
the New Headquarters Building, belongs to a period in American modernism
immediately following World War II; its lineage can be traced, however, to 19th
century Europe, especially France. During that period, art was set in a radically
different direction, in part due to:
- the industrial revolution, which created a middle class that not only
changed the nature of art patronage but also changed the subject matter of art
from grandiose depictions to mundane moments in contemporary time and place,
- scientific and technological developments, at a time when the
science of optics examined the passage of light and its impact on the human eye.
Although photography: had initially been seen as a threat to painting, artists
during this period.came to see it as a liberating force, freeing,* them from the
traditional role of recorder to one of explorer,
- philosophy, reaching from Aristotle, for whom color was "flawed
light, a tragic necessity between divine radiance and stygian darkness" to the late
19th century mystical and occult movements, who claimed that colors were
symbols. Artists began to examine the myth and art of past cultures�including
non-European ones.
- the development of Freudian and Jungian psychology, which
examined the dream world state and the production of new, biomorphic images--a
major factor in the development of Surrealism.
The Washington School of Color was art with an agenda! This was not,
however, a new concept--in the 17th century, the powerful Dutch mercantile class
sponsored oil paintings to espouse the tenets of the Reformation. The work was in
stark contrast to the elaborate and emotional frescos in Italian churches, which
were promoting the cause of the counter-Reformation.
It is important to view the works of the Washington School of Color relative
to those of the New York School, represented by "gesture" or "action" 'painters such
as Jackson Pollock and Willem deKooning. Artists in the New York School, known
as the Abstract Expressionists, used large, simple areas of color that inundate the
eye. They had been influenced by Edmund Burke, an 18th century English
philosopher whose passages on the nature of the sublime led them to seek "the
effect of infinity".
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Beth groups, enveloping the philosophy of Existentialism, were reacting
against the ideologies of the 1930s, which were seen as morally and
philosophically bankrupt after the devastation of World War I. These artists
avoided fixed ideas, patterns, or standards. The American art vanguard of the
1940s moved decidedly toward a highly sulbjective and personal art, exploring for
ways to uncover fresh images.
An understanding of optics led to an awareness that the artists' sought-after
sense of boundlessness was further intensified when the areas of color were close
in value, evenly painted, and not delineated--continuin an uninterrupted
progression into the field of color. To/further a ent the sensation of an
enveloping color, the color field painters worked on an ever-large scale. Some art
critics maintain that the grand scale is actually evocative of the vast American
landscape. The paintings impress one as possessing the qualities not so much of
things but of impulses and excited movements that emerge and change before our
eyes.
The younger artists who emerged in the 1950s moved somewhat away from
the current of Abstract Expressionsim, moving toward more openness of design
and image and toward a clarity that *distinguished them from the compressed
space and the frantic brush expression of the action painters. The artists began to
espouse an "art for art's sake", tryin. g to purge art of representation and illusion.
The appearance of flatness on the canvas was important. They developed a
technique called soakstain, in which diluted paint was spilled onto an =primed
canvas and allowed to soak into the weave to reinforce the two-dimensional
appearance of the surface and expunge the pictorial field of any suggestion of
spatial illusion.
In describing Modernist paintings, critic Clement Greenberg notes that the
viewer is first aware of the flatness of the pictures, before being aware of what the
flatness contains. In maintaining the integrity of the flat plane, Modernist artists
ruthlessly imposed on themselves a very specific set of limiting conditions; they
dispensed with concepts that had earlier been considered essential to the making
and experiencing of art. Their art inadvertently tested all theories about art, and
in doing so, revived an interest in the purely pictorial aspects of picture making.
Modernist art has been partially credited with the revival of interest in the Old
Masters, whose reputations had, over the centuOati. , fallen by the wayside.
Modernist art complements the modern architectural design of our two
headquarters buildings and also complements the technological theme of artwork
in other space in this building, in particular. The art is either owned by the
Agency or loaned by the Melzacs, who have been longtime friends of the Agency.
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