US graphics in the Städel Frankfurt: The body prevails

Not another exhibition on the human

and especially not in times of war - the sigh is natural in view of the title "Humanity: From Pollock to Bourgeois - American Art in the Städel Museum" in Frankfurt, Homo sapiens is currently not showing itself to be very humane.

Stefan Trinks

Editor in the Feuilleton.

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But after the first of the fifty American works on paper, which come entirely from the company's own stock, from the graphic collection treasures that have been successively expanded over decades with the help of the Friedrichs Foundation, one is reconciled.

It is precisely the concentration on the post-war period from Jackson Pollock and an end predominantly in the nineties that brings the unexpected realization: US art, which according to popular opinion should be almost entirely abstract and, according to Clement Greenberg, should be as “flat” as a board, offers countless pictures of people, perhaps just as a balance to the parallel abstract large formats in painting.

This is not surprising, since on the one hand working on paper is often a not yet completely abstract, experimental path to completion, the notorious "Disegno" as the first step,

which already contains everything later, but keeps it even more clearly visible.

On the other hand, the paper as a background allows for a closer proximity than the canvas, simply because everyone has been very familiar with the organic, wooden material as a carrier for our everyday and quick notes since kindergarten and school days.

If the exhibition in the Städel proves one thing, then it is the sometimes bizarre meticulousness and scrupulousness with which American artists spent years looking for the most suitable paper, making it themselves or working with the printers involved until they tore their hair.

Art history calls this serial establishment of new printing and paper workshops in the 1960s, especially in New York, the “Graphic Boom”.

On the other hand, the paper as a background allows for a closer proximity than the canvas, simply because everyone has been very familiar with the organic, wooden material as a carrier for our everyday and quick notes since kindergarten and school days.

If the exhibition in the Städel proves one thing, then it is the sometimes bizarre meticulousness and scrupulousness with which American artists spent years looking for the most suitable paper, making it themselves or working with the printers involved until they tore their hair.

Art history calls this serial establishment of new printing and paper workshops in the 1960s, especially in New York, the “Graphic Boom”.

On the other hand, the paper as a background allows for a closer proximity than the canvas, simply because everyone has been very familiar with the organic, wooden material as a carrier for our everyday and quick notes since kindergarten and school days.

If the exhibition in the Städel proves one thing, then it is the sometimes bizarre meticulousness and scrupulousness with which American artists spent years looking for the most suitable paper, making it themselves or working with the printers involved until they tore their hair.

Art history calls this serial establishment of new printing and paper workshops in the 1960s, especially in New York, the “Graphic Boom”.

simply because everyone has been intimately familiar with the organic, wooden material as the carrier of our everyday, quick notes since kindergarten and school days.

If the exhibition in the Städel proves one thing, then it is the sometimes bizarre meticulousness and scrupulousness with which American artists spent years looking for the most suitable paper, making it themselves or working with the printers involved until they tore their hair.

Art history calls this serial establishment of new printing and paper workshops in the 1960s, especially in New York, the “Graphic Boom”.

simply because everyone has been intimately familiar with the organic, wooden material as the carrier of our everyday, quick notes since kindergarten and school days.

If the exhibition in the Städel proves one thing, then it is the sometimes bizarre meticulousness and scrupulousness with which American artists spent years looking for the most suitable paper, making it themselves or working with the printers involved until they tore their hair.

Art history calls this serial establishment of new printing and paper workshops in the 1960s, especially in New York, the “Graphic Boom”.

created them themselves or worked on them with the executing printers until they tore their hair out.

Art history calls this serial establishment of new printing and paper workshops in the 1960s, especially in New York, the “Graphic Boom”.

created them themselves or worked on them with the executing printers until they tore their hair out.

Art history calls this serial establishment of new printing and paper workshops in the 1960s, especially in New York, the “Graphic Boom”.

Faces made of blocks or neon foil

Of course, with Chuck Close or Jim Dine, there were always artists who stuck to the figurative throughout the decades.

But even with Close's pixelated “Self-Portrait” from 1999, one can see how mathematically exact and thus abstract the artist calculated every little box of his face, which is divided into squares.

And vice versa, in a strange crossover principle, even with core abstracts like Pollock or Jasper Johns, research in recent years has increasingly revealed how much they clung to the image of man throughout their lives.

Not only do Pollock's drippings always reveal something figurative on closer inspection, there are even agglomerations of bodies and knots of dancing people.

Pollock's "Figure" from 1948, which can be seen in the Städel, consists, like the figurations dripped onto the canvas with the same viscous black enamel paint, only of scrawled contours and looks like a little man made of wire mesh that has been bent into shape by a crude motor.

But just as the master of dripping had to laboriously remove his canvas pictures from the wooden frame and lay them on the floor, because otherwise the paint would have run down due to gravity and he wanted to be “in the picture”, so it is with “Figure”. the only work on paper shown in the Städel that was also worked on while lying on the floor: the relief of the skin-like, viscous enamel paint rises up clearly on the handmade Whatman vellum paper, which even lends itself to the physical.