As a result of World War II, European artists migrated to America, enlarging the scene and diminishing Paris as the center. America was beginning its dominance of the art world with the emergence of the Abstract Expressionists.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning).
Far from being dominated by ideas from Paris and New York, Latin American artists were often the innovators. They were doing drip paintings in advance of Pollock, creating language art before the American conceptualists, and fashioning shaped canvases decades before Kelly or Stella.
The artist is something of an outsider in America. I have always felt that America does not value its artists, certainly not in the sense that the Europeans do.
From 1940 to the present, the art world - and particularly Los Angeles - has undergone a transformation not unlike the Italian Renaissance.
American art in general... takes to surreal exaggerations and metaphors; but its Puritan work ethic has little use for the playful self-indulgence behind Parisian Surrealism.
The history of American art, in a way, begins with Jackson Pollock and his big paintings. This theme of bigness - all painters and sculptors have dealt with it ever since.
We could ask artists from abroad to come in too, so that there could be a mixing and matching of skills from Europe, America and here which would widen our world.
The arts in America exist in spite of America, not because of America.
Russia, France, Germany and China. They revere their writers. America is still a frontier country that almost shudders at the idea of creative expression.
American art, like America, must wait and live a while longer.