The outbreak of World War II caused many artists to move from Europe to America and settle in New York. Many of them met through the WPA (Works Project Administration), which funded artists for painting murals in government buildings. Others were introduced through the Cubist Hans Hoffman, who taught at the Arts Students League and later opened a school of his own. The body of work produced by these artists between 1940 and 1960 is not all abstract or expressionistic, but it is nonetheless referred to as Abstract Expressionism, an artistic school of which color field painting is one branch. Because Abstract Expressionists met primarily at the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village, the movement is also called The New York School.
Color Field painting stands apart from other facets of Abstract Expressionism largely in its rejection of the gesturalism that marks the "action" styles (for example, Pollock's dripped and flung style of paint application) in favor of a much quieter, simpler approach. Though like the Abstractionists the Color Field painters reject representational subject matter, they diverge from all other styles in their embrace of pure color and geometric design. The typical Color Field work is large blocks of color, soft or hard-edged, which, according to art historian Marilyn Stokstad is meant to "evoke transcendent emotional states."
The first artists to be characterized as Color Field painters were Mark Rothko (1903--1970), Barnett Newman (1905--1970), and Clyfford Still (1904--1980). The term was applied because of the similarities in the emotional and formal styles of their work, which was composed of large "fields" of solid color.
Color Field painting is characterized by large compositions of solid color that covers the entire canvas. Like action paintings, Color Field paintings lack a central focus and instead treat the surface as a field of vision. They do not depict objects in the natural world, but instead are meant to evoke emotion in the viewer using flat color alone. The content of the painting is the tension caused by the overlapping color fields and the magnitude of the canvas itself, which envelops the viewer in colors that extend beyond peripheral vision, so that the color field becomes a vast ocean. Shapes depicted on the canvas are integrated to the extent that spacial distinctions blur, and the forms shift in the viewer's eye from image to background and vice versa.
In addition to the first three Color Field artists, there are several others whose work follows the Color Field motif. Among these are Jules Olitski (1922--), Kenneth Noland (1924--), Alma Thomas, Morris Louis, Paul Jenkins, Sam Gilliam and Norman Lewis, though there are many others.
Although their work is similar enough to be classified under one label, not all of these artists worked in the same style, nor did they attribute the same meaning to their work. Mark Rothko's work is typically soft-edged, depicting two to four rectangles of color layered over a monochrome background while Barnett Newman paints precise monochrome canvases, totally uninterrupted except for one or more vertical lines, or "zips," which divide the color. Other artists, such as Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis, developed a specific type of Color Field painting called "Stain Painting," in which liquid paint is poured onto unprimed canvas.
The Color Field painters broke the conventions of their day in terms of both subject matter and technique. The seemingly simple or meaningless canvases are meant to evoke an elemental yet cerebral response in the viewer. The goal was not to create beautiful pictures, but to tap into the sublime. As the artists Gottlieb, Rothko and Newman themselves wrote in a famous letter to the New York Times in June 1943: "To us, art is an adventure into an unknown world of the imagination which is fancy-free and violently opposed to common sense. There is no such thing as a good painting about nothing. We assert that the subject is critical."
The size of the paintings are crucial to the interpretation. The enormous canvases coupled with the intended close viewing range surround and immerse the viewer with the stark, flat color. Color Field painting lacks detail and description about a visible subject, and so in one sense the individual painting's subject matter is the subjective experience of color itself. At the same time, however, the paintings are making objective observations about the state of humankind. Mark Rothko, for instance, used his canvases to depict two contentious human tendencies that were described by Friedrich Nietzsche as the Dionysian and the Apollonian (the emotional, instinctual self versus the rational, disciplined self). The colors are united on the canvas, and yet, because the modern human is always "tragically divided," the color fields are always separated as well.
Barnett Newman also addressed the condition of modern humanity through his work, and said that his subject matter was "[t]he self, terrible and constant." (Art History, p 1135). The thin vertical lines (zips) that divide his canvases are symbolic of the finite self contrasted against the seemingly infinite background color of the universe. His work sought to make the viewer feel not insignificant, but exalted and free from confinement. According to Newman, his paintings are means of "... freeing ourselves of the obsolete props of an outmoded and antiquated legend ... freeing ourselves from the impediments of memory, association, nostalgia, legend, and myth that have been the devices of Western European painting" (metmuseum.org).
The originality and innovative edge of Abstract Expressionism in general, including Color Field art, wore off at almost the same moment that the Museum of Modern Art organized an exhibition of their work. The show toured eight European capitals and finished in New York in 1958-59, but by that time the movement was no longer new, and the second generation of artists who tried to continue on where the first wave had left off were accused of being "method actors" whose work meant nothing. There followed a return to the figure and more representational art, in spite of art critics adamant assertion that the modern artist could only move forward by becoming more abstract. Art diverged, then, first to sculpture such as George Segal's work which placed sculpted figures in real environments, and then to living people in real environments. The latter was called "happenings," or performance art.