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The Hudson River painters' directness and simplicity of vision influenced such later artists as Winslow Homer ( 1836- 1910), who depicted rural America—the sea, the mountains, and the people who lived near them. Middle-class city life found its painter in Thomas Eakins ( 1844- 1916), an uncompromising realist whose unflinching honesty undercut the genteel preference for romantic sentimentalism.

Controversy soon became a way of life for American artists. In fact, much of American painting and sculpture since 1900 has been a series of revolts against tradition. "To hell with the artistic values," announced Robert Henri ( 1865- 1929). He was the leader of what critics called the "ash-can" school of painting, after the group's portrayals of the squalid aspects of city life. Soon the ash-can artists gave way to modernists arriving from Europe—the cubists and abstract painters promoted by the photographer Alfred Stieglitz ( 1864- 1946Events January January 4 Theodore Schurch becomes the last person to be executed for offences committed under the Treachery Act of 1940 January 7 Allied recognize Austrian republic with 1937 borders the country is divided into four occupation zones Januar) at his Gallery 291 in New York CitySkyline, with Statue of Liberty New York, New York" redirects here. For alternate meanings, see New York, New York (disambiguation). New York — officially named City of New York and often called New York City to distinguish it from the state of New York,.

In the years after World War IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough, a group of young New York artists formed the first native American movement to exert major influence on foreign artists: abstract expressionismAbstract expressionism was an American post- World War II art movement. It was the first specifically American movement to achieve worldwide influence and also the one that put New York City at the center of the art world, a role formerly filled by Paris.. Among the movement's leaders were Jackson PollockJackson Pollock ( January 28, 1912 August 11, 1956) was an influential American artist and a major force in the abstract expressionism movement. He was born in Cody, Wyoming, and later moved to New York in 1929, where he studied under Thomas Hart Benton. ( 19121912 is a leap year starting on Monday (link will take you to calendar) Events January 1 Establishment of Republic of China. January 6 New Mexico is admitted as the 47th U. January 17 British polar explorer Robert Falcon Scott and a team of four begin the- 19561956 is a leap year starting on Sunday. see link for calendar) Events January January 1 End of Anglo- Egyptian Condominium in Sudan. January 16 President Gamal Abdal Nasser of Egypt vows to reconquer Palestine January 26 1956 Winter Olympic Games open in), Willem de KooningWillem de Kooning ( April 24, 1904- March 19, 1997) an abstract expressionist painter was born in Rotterdam in The Netherlands. The Rotterdam Academy of Fine Art accepted de Kooning as a student in 1916. In 1926 he stowed away on a boat to New York City. ( 1904- 1997), and Mark Rothko ( 1903- 1970). The abstract expressionists abandoned formal composition and representation of real objects to concentrate on instinctual arrangements of space and color and to demonstrate the effects of the physical action of painting on the canvas.

Members of the next artistic generation favored a different form of abstraction: works of mixed media. Among them were Robert Rauschenberg ( 1925- ) and Jasper Johns ( 1930- ), who used photos, newsprint, and discarded objects in their compositions. Pop artists, such as Andy Warhol ( 1930- 1987), Larry Rivers ( 1923- ), and Roy Lichtenstein ( 1923- ), reproduced, with satiric care, everyday objects and images of American popular culture—Coca-Cola bottles, soup cans, comic strips.

Today artists in America tend not to restrict themselves to schools, styles, or a single medium. A work of art might be a performance on stage or a hand-written manifesto; it might be a massive design cut into a Western desert or a severe arrangement of marble panels inscribed with the names of American soldiers who died in Vietnam. Perhaps the most influential 20th-century American contribution to world art has been a mocking playfulness, a sense that a central purpose of a new work is to join the ongoing debate over the definition of art itself.