The Political Spirit

In the thesis, the United States before and after World War II was described as thebackground. The1913Armory Show made New York become the hotbed of theModern Art Movement in the United States since the1920s, breeding the modern artcollections, exhibitions, galleries, art museums and educational institutions,promoting the concept of Modern Art in the United States. However, the outbreak ofthe Great Depression in1929depressed the development of modern art movement inUnited States; coupling with lack of originality, resulting in too blindly followed theEuropean Abstract art, Social Realism occupied the mainstream art.According to the context of this period, the first part of this thesis narrates twoladies, Hilla Rebay and Peggy Guggenheim, and the story between them in1930s.Advocates of abstract art in the United States, in1927Hilla Rebay became theconsultant of the Guggenheim collection and carried the modern European abstract artinto the United States by the name of "Non-Objective Art"; meanwhile, SolomonGuggenheim’s niece Peggy, took the radical Surrealism and their artists back to theU.S. and promoted it through her "Art of this Century" gallery. The competitionbetween Hilla and Peggy, on the surface was to carve up the market of the modern artin America, but in fact was the ideological differences between the spirit of art and thesocial of art.After the break of World War II, a large number of avant-garde artists fled to theUnited States. This not only made the New York replaced Paris as the Centre ofContemporary Art, European artists gathered in New York also integrated the twoseparated forms of art and the American local paintings. This integration not onlypromoted the discourse and practice of American modern art, changed imitation ofEuropean abstract art, but also formed the awareness of local abstract art paintings,ultimately gave birth to Abstract Expressionism Art with dual political forms of artpolitics and reality politics.Around the "art politics” and the innovation practice of New York artists, thesecond half of this article analyzed the causes of modern art rising in U.S. since the1930s. The political form of art, in fact, sourced from the competitions betweenNon-Objective Art collections and Surrealism for the discourse in New York art world,and finally showed in the Abstract Expressionist Movement after World War II. Theart of political had provided a new interpretation to art society and art history. This isthe meaning and research purposes of the thesis.