Beyond Pollock

Abstract Expressionism was never just one artist. Willem de Kooning attacked canvases with violent brushstrokes hovering between figuration and abstraction. Mark Rothko painted enormous fields of luminous color designed to engulf viewers in pure chromatic emotion. Each found a different path to painting as direct experience.

Rothko's chapel in Houston — fourteen dark canvases in an octagonal room — represents the movement's spiritual ambition. He wanted viewers to stand before his paintings and feel something approaching religious transcendence without any specific religious content.