Art critic and close friend of many of the artists Meyer Schapiro expressed this idea in a 1957 essay, “The Liberating Quality of Avant-Garde Art”:Pollock later reacted very strongly against the style of Regionalist scene painting in which he was trained during his early years under Thomas Hart Benton.It is necessary to address why, if Pollock did not favor placing his art in service of politics, he worked for the WPA for nearly five years.

Additionally, through their art, Pollock and the Abstract Expressionists critiqued Franklin Roosevelt’s promotion of government-funded initiatives exhibited in his New Deal programs heralded as America’s greatest boon.

Gutai Art does not distort matter.As totalitarianism fails in politics, in culture, too, anything inconveniently totalitarian should disappear.Kazuo Shiraga, 'The Establishment of the Individual'We are following the path that will lead to an international common ground where the arts of the east and the west influence each other. "The Gutai Group Movement Overview and Analysis".

In 1930, while still in his late teens, he traveled to New York, where he studied art at the Art Students League under the American Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton. It emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective and modeling. It was founded in 1954 by the painter Jiro Yoshihara in Osaka, Japan, in response to the reactionary artistic context of the time.

During the 1930s, he was strongly influenced by the American Regionalism of his mentor Thomas Hart Benton, yet Going West is characterized by a dark, almost mystical quality similar to another American visionary painter Pollock admired, Albert Pinkham Ryder.

Pollock typified Abstract Expressionism’s antipolitic by creating an art that broke from social labels or political uses.

Art that arises from destruction and impt of inner life of objects. Nationalism pitted state against state and subverted the goal of unity through common human experiences, the artistic expressions of which were quite possibly the “problems of contemporary painting” of concern to Pollock.

"The experiment," the group announced, "is to take art out from closed rooms ... exposing the works to the natural forces of sun, wind, and rain. This important group—most significantly comprising Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Arshile Gorky, Barnett Newman, and Clyfford Still—was united in seeking a reconciliation of the turbulent,… Specifically, Pollock’s art displayed the political culture of Abstract Expressionism through the creation of art as a unifying factor of humanity, the use of negation to make a personal statement, and the belief that art was its own referent.This research is certainly relevant to studies of art history, but also to social, cultural, and intellectual history, and the humanities. It welcomes all pursuits whether it be actions, objects, or sounds; Gutai art has no rules.Although extremely diverse in nature, all Gutai art highlights the method in which it is made. These artists began their careers between the two World Wars, and nearly all of them experienced the economic hardship of the Great Depression by the time they reached prominence, moving them to conclude that “only that subject matter is valid which is tragic and timeless.”Perhaps the most revolutionary and well-known Americanborn painter of the New York School was Jackson Pollock. As we have seen, Pollock believed his paintings formed a life of their own, as his inner energies, linked with the Collective Unconscious, came out in visual form. A painting some fifty feet long hung from the trees, illuminated sculptures glowed in the night, a hot-pink nylon sheet pinned just above the ground rippled in the wind. Biography of Jackson Pollock Jachec, Nancy. Kazuo became one of the leading individuals of Gutai, adding that to his list of activities as Shiraga was already a member of Zero Kai Group, a collective based on the belief that artworks should be created out of nothing. 48 Benton’s American West portrayals, such as the early 1930s The Arts of Life in America mural series, were clearly absent in Pollock’s universal, non-geographic abstractions.

“Concerning the Spiritual in Contemporary Art.” In And this is the natural course of the history of art. They also disliked the bureaucratic nature that characterized the Soviet Union, and they viewed Marx’s idea of a determinist history as too restrictive. “The New York School.” Delivered 27 October, 1950, Mid-Western Conference of the College Art Association, University of Louisville, KY. "Gutai Art on the Stage" were two performances that were given by the Gutai group in 1957 and 1958, respectively. This new internationalism had a strong impact on Japan's cultural scene, and it was against this backdrop of young democracy and a growing belief in individual freedom that Jirõ Yoshihara was inspired to found the Gutai Art Association in the affluent town of Ashiya, near Osaka in Japan, in 1954.A generation older than most of the collective's other future members, Yoshihara was the son of a wealthy merchant, able to thoroughly finance many of Gutai's activities.

Fluxus was an international network of artists of the 1960s who worked in fields ranging from music to performance to the visual arts. This enabled him to explore themes of basic human nature and exemplify a political philosophy in which individuals were autonomous, and creative expression, rather than governmentled industry or economics, served as the glue for social bonds. Oxford Art Journal 26.2 (2003): 121-40. It was founded in 1954 by the painter Jiro Yoshihara in Osaka, Japan, in response to the reactionary artistic context of the time. The Collective Unconscious, humanity’s inevitable connection with its archaic past, transcended individual personality and served as a means to historical and contemporary self-discovery. Fisher, K., 2010.