Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s

In this original and wide-ranging study, Michael Leja argues that Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Willem de Kooning, and other Abstract Expressionist artists were part of a culture-wide initiative to reimagine the self. Leja demonstrates that the interests of these New York School artists in tapping "primitive" and unconscious components of self aligns them with many contemporary essayists, Hollywood filmmakers, journalists, and popular philosophers of the period.