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Abstract Expressionism And Art Education: Formalism And Self-Expression As Curriculum Ideology, Kerry Freedman

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

In the 1940's and 1950's, formalism and self-expression theories about abstract expressionism were incorporated into art education. However, as these products of the art community became a part of curriculum, the social and political foundations of the art and the theories were ignored. A school art style was emphasized that contained only selected elements of Greenberg's formalist analysis of abstract expressionism. Curriculum also contained a reduction of Rosenberg's theory of expressive process to some pseudo-expressive technical characteristics. While the argument is not made that there was a studied and analytical reinterpretation of these critics' theories in school, the theories represented …