A walk through abstract expressionism
“Blue Support,” by Dael PattonBasic principles Abstract expressionist painter and arts teacher Dael Patton And so let us begin, in medias res, with Adolph Gottlieb coming out from New York and teaching a graduate art class at UCLA. Gottlieb (1903-1974) is still hailed as one of the masters of abstract expressionism, and one of his students that year, Dael Patton, had thus far been doing representational work and teaching. She’d already earned a Masters in painting, had been working in oil, but was moving into acrylic. Gottlieb was creating pictures in a style with which Patton was largely unfamiliar. And for an artist, that can be all the more reason to jump in and try something new. However, Gottlieb may not have been very good at verbally expressing himself. During what was probably a six-week course there’s just one thing that stands out in Patton’s memory: “He had a big white surface on a board and he came in with a big black marker. He put a couple of ‘X’s and a couple of ‘O’s on it and he said (in his thick Russian-Jewish accent), ‘That’s what I’m talking about.’ And then he left.” By the end of the course, if not sooner, half of Gottlieb’s students had also left. “I learned…
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